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OUT TO WIN 



OUT TO WIN 



BY 

REV. JOSEPH P. CONROY, S.J. 

Author of * 'Talks to Parents," etc. 



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1 BENZIOER BFIOTHERS 



New York, Cincinnati, Chicago 

BENZIGER BROTHERS 

PRINTERS TO THE I PUBLISHERS OF 

HOLY APOSTOLIC SEE | BENZIGER's MAGAZINE 

1919 









3mprimi J^ntrat 

F. X. McMENAlVIY, S.J., 

Praep. Prov. Missourianiae. 



Ntlftt ©bBteL 

ARTHUR J. SCANLAN, S.T.D., 

Censor Librorum. 



^ PATRICK J. HAYES, D.D., 

Archbishop of New York. 



New York, July 28, 1919. 



Copyright, 1919, by Benziger Brothers 

©CI. A5 3 6 2. J 9 



OCT ^^ 



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CONTENTS 



PAGE 



The Way to Win 7 

Shot to Pieces 18 

The Devil's Periscope 31 

Be Bold ......... 45 

Follow Your Interference . . . . 57 

Feathers and Lead 65 

Come, Fido! 76 

Get Along with Yourself .... 85 
A Boy with the 'Tunch" .... 97 

Break in Somewhere 110 

A Friend of Boys .120 

Patting Mud Pies 131 

Bogus Money 144 

Loose Wires 156 

Speed and Oranges 168 



OUT TO WIN 

THE WAY TO WIN 



SOMEWHEEE between the ages of fifteen 
and twenty, and generally nearer to 
fifteen than to twenty, many boys go 
through a mental process which, if we left 
it to them to define, they would declare to 
be the period of their "waking up." And 
if we further inquired from what and to 
what they were waking up, they, or at least 
some of them, would tell us that they were 
waking up from the silly bondage, the in- 
fantine trammels of babyhood to the ''guh- 
lorious" freedom of manhood. To put it 
briefly, Bill Horton is waking up to his 
'^rights." 

On the football field after a particularly 
thrilling play, you've often heard those 
lullabies that float out from the "rooters' " 
section, soothing the warriors' souls and 



8 The Way to Win 

urging them on to further deeds of high 
emprise. You remember one in which the 
chorus comjnunes with itself in the following 
fashion. 

The Leader: ''What's the matter with 
Tacksey Welsh?" 

Chorus: "He's all right!" 

The Leader: "Who's all right?" 

Chorus : "Tacksey Welsh ! He is, he is, 
he is all right!" 

"Anything strange about that?" you ask. 

"Not a thing," I answer. And if I hap- 
pened to be in with the dear old chorus after 
Tacksey had made his thirty yards around 
end, or his beautiful eleven-yard drive 
through tackle, I should cheer as raucously 
as the most hardened "rooter" after Tacksey 
came up for air — if he were on our side, that 
is. 

Perfectly correct, too. Tacksey makes a 
really fine play. A group of his school- 
mates, who know a fine play when they see 
it, appreciate it generously. Nor do they 
confine their appreciation to Tacksey alone. 
They are ready to cheer every player on 
the team at a like manifestation of skill. 



The Way to Win 9 

II 

Now our young friend, whom we de- 
scribed in our opening paragraph as having 
arrived at the "waking up" period, has be- 
gun to play a new game in which the situa- 
tions are parallel to the one outlined above. 
But with this slight difference: he, himself, 
Bill Horton, is Tacksey, and he is the rest 
of the eleven plus the coach and the "rooters" 
and the opposing team also. Naturally, 
everything goes lovely — in Bill's mind. 
For when he isn't Tacksey Welsh at full, 
he is Whaleback Smith at center, or Flash 
Wheeler at end, or Python White at tackle, 
and every play a wonder. He is on both 
sides of a split play, at both ends of the for- 
ward pass, is both coach and strategy board, 
fixes opponents in a state of helplessness. 
Above all he is the entire "rooters' " section, 
where the cheering is never for anybody else 
but Bill, and is so continuous and so deafen- 
ing that it would confuse Bill's mind if said 
mind were not so powerful and penetrating. 
The cheering is uninterrupted because our 
Bill never makes a mistake, and the only 



10 The Way to Win 

mistake that can be made in Bill's neighbor- 
hood is to hint, even in a faint whisper, that 
Bill has perhaps blundered. (Referee's 
whistle here. Time out for injuries to 
hinter.) 

"Where in the world," you will ask me in 
astonishment, "can any one play a game like 
that? It can't be done. There ain't no 
such animal." 

My dear boy, that game is played never- 
theless, and played on a spot where you 
would say it was mean even to try it — on the 
field of the family fireside ! 

Recollect — Bill has "w^aked up to his 
rights." How does he prove he has these 
rights? Why, Bill is taller than mother, 
and gaining rapidly on "dad." He weighs 
one hundred and forty-one pounds, putting 
on poundage at the rate of two a month. 
( Meat and grocery bills footed by aforemen- 
tioned "dad.") He is terribly strong. 
"Feel that muscle," cormnands Bill, the idea 
being that they feel it and shudder. He is 
working on a deep bass voice into which he 
is learning to insinuate the domineering note. 
Also on that dare-devil walk. (You know 



The Way to Win 11 

the walk that's a cross between a slouch and 
a ramble, with that easy, careless suggestion 
of a big chest with an awful reserve strength 
back of it. ) He wears real clothes at last — 
those up-to-the-minute garments in weaves 
for young men. And he knows he looks 
just like those pictures in the Post where the 
perfect athlete with the cut-glass profile 
stands on the deck of the millionaire's yacht 
and points at a white-cap with one of those 
''Ain't-it-grand" expressions on his face, 
and a group of four lovely young ladies 
adoring his clothes. 

Gifted with all this weight, height, avoir- 
dupois, moiscle, all in their proper draping of 
clothes plus- the pose, and what more does 
Bill want? The answer is. Bill wants noth- 
ing. He is there! 

Now let father try to correct Bill, or let 
mother endeavor to advise. 

"Say, haven't I got any rights at all? 
I'm not going to be a baby all my hf e." 

"Don't tell me all that stuff. Don't I 
know?'' You wouldn't think it to hear his 
answers in school, but "knowledge" is really 
Bill's long suit at this stage of the game. 



12 The Way to Win 

"Aw, gee, you won't let me do anything." 
Bill eats, sleeps, has his pocket money, 
schooling, friends, all through his parents. 
That, of course, is nothing. What Bill 
really means is that they will not let him do 
everything. 

*'Just because I'm having a good time, 
you're trying to stop me." He has the 
cheap suspicion that his parents are jealous 
of his fun and wantonly wish to spoil it, for- 
getting that when they might have been en- 
joying themselves they had to spend their 
time caring for Bill. 

''And when I wasn't doing a thing, 
either!" This is where Bill is very likely 
right. He isn't doing a thing, and they 
want him to do something a-nd make a genu- 
ine man of himself. 

These are only samples of Bill's logic and 
language at the 'Vakingup" period. As he 
develops in this direction he will 'certainly get 
worse. If his character be naturally an 
open one, he will become flagrantly disobe- 
dient and rebellious ; if he be what we term a 
close character, he will be sly, secretive, an 
insincere pohtician. But we are consider- 



The Way to Win 13 

ing him here only in the early moves, just 
where the twig begins to take an ugly bend. 

What is really the matter with our boy 
Bill? He may be, for all his mistakes thus 
far, a splendid boy at heart, but he has not 
yet begun to think, in spite of his firm con- 
viction that he has. We spoke of mental 
process in a case like Bill's. It isn't a men- 
tal process at all. It is simply some auto- 
matic lurches of his imagination which Bill 
takes for thinking. He has got himself into 
one of those clothing-store mirror combina- 
tions in which wherever he turns he sees no 
one but Bill. He believes he is wide awake, 
with both eyes taking in the universe, when 
in reality Bill sees about as much of it as a 
new-born kitten in a basket. It is the light 
hurting his eyes and making him peevish. 

And the best proof possible that Bill only 
thinks he's thinking is found in the fact that 
he shows a general resentment against re- 
straint of any kind. Any correction, any 
advice, any word of direction he calls nag- 
ging. Merely point a finger at William and 
he reaches for a brick. 

Now I don't pretend at all that a boy is 



14 The Way to Win 

never nagged. Mistakes are made at times, 
even by father and mother. But I do con- 
tend that, taking things all through, the re- 
straints put upon a boy by his parents will 
average ninety-nine per cent sure and reli- 
able help in the long run, no matter how. it 
looks now. Indeed, we ought to expect a 
high average of just direction from father 
and mother, since it is for precisely that pur- 
pose they have been entrusted with the boy. 

And we do not gi'ow out of their care at a 
bound, but very gradually. We need our 
parents longer than we think. Just as the 
body develops slowly and by imperceptible 
degrees we attain to the perfect use of it: 
just as the mind advances pace by pace from 
ignorance to knowledge, so the will pro- 
gresses by little and little, and often by 
roundabout ways, from weakness to 
strength. This is such an evident fact that 
we see the Government acting upon it. The 
State will not give us a vote in its affairs, nor 
full legal or political liberty until we are 
twenty-one years of age. It doesn't trust 
us before that. 



The Way to Win 



15 



Well, if the Government does not trust 
us, we oughtn't to trust ourselves. Indeed, 
in many things we don't trust ourselves. In 
our care of the body we trust the doctor and 
do just as he tells us. In training our mind 
we follow our professor, and take his word 
for most things in his line. We need not do 
as they say, of course, and thus be sick or 
stupid, or both. But we generally see how 
unwise such conduct is. 

Then why not trust our parents in the 
matter of training our will? That is their 
special business. That is why God gave 
them to us. And if we are a bit wise, we 
shall be glad to hand it over to those who 
know much better than we just how much of 
it we ought to have at any particular stage 
of our growing lives, and to ask them to see 
that it is "fed" to us gradually. 

That is the real reason back of all this 
apparent restraint. It is simply holding us 
in check until we are able to go safely as well 
as swiftly. Anybody can go swiftly with his 
will. The great thing to learn is to go 
safely. And when our parents have taught 



16 The Way to Win 

us this lesson, they have taught us the one 
and only thing that is finally worth knowing 
in this world. 

And right there is where our stubborn Bill 
is blind. He doesn't see this gigantic truth. 
He will not let his parents tell him anything. 
He won't take coaching. He wants cheers 
— loud ones and all the time. He forgets 
that Tacksey Welsh, and Whaleback Smith 
and the rest made their sparkling plays only 
after a fearful gi^ind of coaching from some- 
body outside. Yet he imagines that he can 
fight the tremendous life battle through 
without the least direction from those who 
have been appointed to direct him. Every 
play made on Bill's team is marvelously per- 
fect — and Bill is the whole team. 

And so, let father or mother attempt to 
''coach" son Bill. Why, they are forgetting 
that Bill is the coach, and they are infringing 
on his rights. Son Bill drowns them out 
with cheers for himself from the ''bleachers" 
(Bill has the "bleachers' " rights also) and 
tops off the cheers with the eternal slogan, 
repeated if necessary a million times, 
"He isj he isj he is all right!" 



The Way to Win 17 

Whereat, all we can do, my dear boys, is 
to wait patiently, yawning betimes, and when 
Bill has finished his millionth yell, simply 
add the little word : "Not !" 



SHOT TO PIECES 

Ax old saying that can be traced very far 
back among all peoples, and that is, 
therefore, universally taken as true, is the 
adage, ''The beginning is half the work/' 

But a boy will often contend that his ex- 
perience is dead against this supposed truth. 
And experience, he will tell us in another old 
saying, is the best teacher. 

''Don't talk to me about that 'beginning' 
stuff," moans Da^y Downenout. ''Look at 
the fine beginning I made last year. ^Miy, 
right at the start I pulled myself together 
and gave myself a good talking to. 'Look 
here. Davy,' I said, 'you're going to be a 
busy child this year. First of all. you're 
going to study, and study hard. Then 
you're going to run with a good bunch of 
fellows, and going to do what your father 
and mother say, and you'll be regular at con- 
fession and communion, and you'll stay in at 
night and be steady and observe all the 

'l8 



Shot to Pieces 19 

school and home rules, and not a murmur out 
of you. Do you hear that, Davy?' And I 
said, 'Yep. IVe got every word of it by 
heart, and it all goes — every syllable. Just 
watch my smoke!' " 

"Well," continues Dave, ''could you beat 
that for a beginning? Every item's there. 
Not a thing left out. If that wasn't a good 
start what is a good one ? And now look at 
me! The year's gone, and here's a row of 
flunks, and the 'profs' are after me — ^have 
been for a month, and my parents are asking 
for explanations, and my sisters — say, did 
you ever get a bunch of sisters on your trail? 
They've chased me around the track a thou- 
sand times, and Ralph De Palma hasn't a 
thing on them for speed. I'm done — fin- 
ished. I haven't got a friend anywhere." 

"The old gang is friendly with you yet, 
though, isn't it, Dave?" we ask. 

"Yes, they are. Only for them I 
wouldn't have any one even to speak to." 

"There's confession and communion. 
You do some important speaking there, 
don't you?" 

"Not for a good while, lately, but I made 



20 Shot to Pieces 

a fine start, and they try to tell me that's half 
the work. It didn't get me one-tenth of the 
way. That 'beginning' stuff, I tell you, is 
all a joke." 

Matters certainly do look squally for 
Davy. His little lamb with the snow-white 
fleece of a year ago is now about as inspiring 
to contemplate as a floor mop. 

And the question immediately arises — is 
Davy right? If he made a beginning, why 
did it not carry him at least half way? 

Answer; no, Davy is not right. And his 
work did not reach half way because he did 
not make a beginning. Davy did what a lot 
of boys do — he recited a mere formula of 
words; he talked volubly and picturesquely, 
like a promoter pushing fake mining stock; 
he had an imaginary movie of himself work- 
ing, and he believed the real work was done. 
Davy had only the intention of beginning, 
but he never got far enough to begin. He 
did not know what a beginning really means. 

What does a beginning mean? For in- 
telligent beings a beginning always implies 
a plan, and the greater and the more difficult 
the work, the more carefully must the plan 



Shot to Pieces 21 

be elaborated in detail. And secondly, it 
means that this plan, at least in all its im- 
portant features, is to be fought out inch by 
inch, and adhered to at any cost. 

Test any great undertaking you please 
and you will find that it owes its success to 
these two fundamentals — the idea, carefully 
mapped out into all its ramifications, and the 
resolve never to take eyes off that idea for a 
minute, and to make every move at its dicta- 
tion only. What, for example, is the secret 
of the upbuilding of these United States? 
Its original plan. Where shall we find that 
plan? In the Constitution. There is con- 
tained the underlying idea of our whole 
purpose. Was this plan drawn up with 
care? It is the result of hundreds of years 
of experience, plus the laborious thought of 
great men in council to draw it out in detail. 
And the very first thing the nation did to 
show that it intended to stick to the plan was 
to fight a historic war in defense of it. Al- 
ways we refer back to it as the reason for 
doing or not doing things, and the strongest 
argument that can be brought against a 
proposition is to prove that it is unconstitu- 



22 Shot to Pieces 

tional, that it is against the original plan 
upon which the nation was founded. 

And we try to watch the working out of 
this plan as we resolved to do at the start, 
day by day. We fought the Civil War to 
keep it intact, and we entered the Great 
War in Europe precisely because that Con- 
stitution was threatened again. Constantly 
in our National work we are referring back 
to the original plan. 

It is the same in minor undertakings. 
The building of a church, let us say, implies 
the architect's plan. And not a stone is put 
into that church which has not been decided 
upon beforehand, as to quality, size, shape, 
position. Should a defective stone slip in 
anywhere, a whole wall will be torn down, if 
necessar^% to correct the mistake. 

I remember a few years back that a great 
Marathon race was won by a runner hitherto 
entirely unknown, a ''dark horse" whom 
nobody even thought of as having a chance. 
He was asked how it was done. "I won this 
race five years ago," was the answer. 
"Every contingency of the race I foresaw, 
and I trained for every step of the distance." 



Shot to Pieces 28 

On June 7, 1917, the third Battle of 
Ypres, the battle at Messines ridge, was 
fought. It was won by the British. How? 
A year before two hundred special miners 
were brought from the Newcastle and Car- 
diff coal mines. They were to work out a 
plan their engineers had made. They 
started digging. They took six months to 
bore a mile and a quarter sap extending to 
Messines ridge. Then they dug nineteen 
mine pockets under sixteen of the most 
formidable enemy fortresses. In each mine 
pocket they installed a quadrangular well, 
filled each with twenty-five tons of terrible 
explosives, and installed an electric system 
to convey the fatal spark. This was work 
of the most diflEicult and dangerous kind, 
carried on under the very feet of the German 
army, who had their suspicions aroused 
and who were watching day and night. 
Yet the plan was followed to the last 
detail. 

On June seventh the long toil and 
preparations were finished. The spark 
flew, and Messines ridge flew with it. The 
battle was won, but the victorj^ must be 



24 Shot to Pieces 

traced back to the plan and the resolve to 
live up to it or die in the effort. 

This is what beginning means. And it 
means the same thing for a boy facing a 
year of school as for the builder of a nation, 
the creator of a cathedral, the runner in the 
race, the army on the field of battle. 

And epecially note this one thing; that a 
plan with all these men did not consist in 
simply saying, "We are going to do this." 
They said that much, it is true, but immedi- 
ately they added, ''And let us consider 
closely what it is that can keep us from 
doing it?" They started out by looking 
ahead for difficulties, and by matching them- 
selves against those difficulties. That is the 
meaning of work — difficulties. And work 
done means difficulties beaten. But diffi- 
culties will never be beaten unless foreseen 
and planned f 6r. 

Looking out, then, on his school year, a 
boy may well say, "This is going to be work, 
and hard work." But he must add, "At 
what exact point, or points, is it going to 
be hard? There will be difficulties from 
outside me as well as from inside. Where 



Shot to Pieces 25 

will they be? Just when will each par- 
ticular trouble show itself, and what will I 
do then?" 

Then he begins to have a plan, which will 
take shape somewhat like this. The school 
seasons begin with what we call the fall term. 
Any troubles here? A sea of troubles. 
Let us stand on the shore and hear what the 
wild waves are saying. 

The first wave that comes in is the heat 
wave — the sickening September heat that 
seems to get spitefully worse because it has 
to depart shortly. How can one think in 
such heat? It is enough merely to breathe! 
Yes, it's sad, but how are you going to plan 
for it? 

Then the suddenness of the change! 
From the negligee attire, the bare arms, the 
coatless, hatless, coUarless Apollo of the 
tennis court, the bathing beach, the auto- 
mobile, the boating party, back to slavery 
of conventional dress, the "Scavenger's 
Daughter" of style. It's choking to think 
about it, and our eyes fill up with tears. 
But what does our blueprint show here 
toward topping this ugly wave? 



26 Shot to Pieces 

From, too, the carefree evening sprawl on 
the porch, the dreamy loll in the hammock, 
the beautiful baritone humming "the latest" 
to the moon, and thrumming — can it be a 
ukelele? — while the fair ones adore (we 
know they do) through the fragrant dusk 
of the mellow Arabian night, back to the 
strait- jacket of the desk and bench, the 
chamber of horrors called a laboratory, back 
to the nasty machine-gun fire of professors 
making their fall drive, the gaping shell 
holes of ignorance plunged into our garden 
of nightingales and love ; back to the garish 
glare of the electric light, the hideous 
scratch, scratch of hurried pen over endless 
wastes of paper — back, in short, to the 
trenches ! 

Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio! 

But what are we going to do about it? 

Yes, and when the fall coolness comes in, 
and when we are ready to be a hero, and to 
carry the oval through the massed enemy, to 
the flying of banners, the squawk of multi- 
tudinous bugles, the ripping cheers — just 
when the weather settles into the delicious 
frostiness that fits the blood of chivalry, then 



Shot to Pieces 27 

to be dragged through the dust of the fall 
''exams" behind the tyrant's chariot, and to 
toss one's brains into the emery wheels of the 
cruel "grind!" 

More elegiac verse. And again the fatal 
question — "What about it, you?" 

We could and we should go on, through 
the basketball season and the indoor track 
and the baseball seasons, looking ahead at 
everything that might unduly attract us — 
what companions we are likely to meet under 
various circumstances, what temptations 
may catch us and fool us. Look also at the 
things that repel us, which we shall surely be 
called upon to do — particular studies we 
hate and that take all the life out of us ; cer- 
tain people we are sure to think will be un- 
necessarily severe with us. Look forward 
again at our spiritual Ufe. See where we 
have slumped in the past, and under what 
conditions the slump occurred, and who 
occasioned it. Don't miss a single one of 
our coming difficulties. 

And then? Why, then begin to draw our 
plan, to divide our time so that each occu- 
pation shall have its legitimate place — 



28 Shot to Pieces 

games, study, amusements, companionship, 
prayer, the sacraments. And by dividing 
our time we do not mean that a boy should 
QB.YVY a stop-watch on himself, and start 
each new work at the sound of the pistol. 
Xo, we mean that a boy should make a 
mental valuation to himself of the relative 
w^orth of the various things he has to do, and 
to keep to that order of things no matter 
what happens. 

For example, the one great result of a 
boy's school life should be character — clean- 
ness of heart, honesty of purpose, willing- 
ness to help and to sacrifice for a cause. 
Xow this simply cannot be done without 
prayer, without the sacraments. These, 
therefore, come in the first place, and 
nothing whatever, under any consideration, 
should interfere with them. Begin here and 
dig in. 

Then we know that study comes ahead of 
games. Both are indeed parts of a school 
life, but our good sense tells us that no 
matter how attractive games are, and how 
boring study seems at times to be, neverthe- 
less it is study that is the more important. 



Shot to Pieces 29 

Then give study its place, and in case of a 
clash between the two know beforehand 
which must win. It isn't easy, often, to cut 
them apart, but keep that razor ready, and, 
on the minute, swing it. 

Consider what companionships we are 
likely to slip into, what sort of close friend- 
ships we are inclined to strike up. Are they 
such as will tend to take me away from my 
studies, to lessen my grip on myself, to lead 
me down dirty roads where I shall be mired? 
Am I going to be able to say "No" in this 
emergency? Or, better, will I stay so far 
away from such a mess that I shall not be 
called upon to say even that much? This is 
sometimes a rather severe test, but it is right 
here that we must be ready to drive in the 
spade on the exact line as planned. 

When a boy looks at his school year in 
this fashion and goes at the task right at the 
jump, with the resolve that he will carry it 
through in spite of feeling ''rotten" about it, 
as he is sure to feel more than once, then he 
is making a beginning, not merely "putting 
up a bluff." 

That is why Davy Downenout is such a 



30 Shot to Pieces 

pulp at the year's end. He never made a 
beginning; he only ''bluffed" at it. He out- 
lined no defense, no attack, drew not a 
single map, got none of his digging tools 
together. And so, when the battle was on, 
Davy didn't know where to start, had 
nothing to dig with, and before he could 
scratch a hole deep enough with his fingers 
he was shot to pieces. 



^ 



THE DEVIL^S PERISCOPE 

ONE of the ''grouches" which a boy fre- 
quently indulges in, and in which he 
feels entirely justified, is that he is not 
"treated as a man." 

''Say, ma, how long am I going to be a 
small boy around this house?" complains 
Jack. "I'm getting no better treatment 
than Tommie, and he's only nine. I'm 
eighteen. And pa's doing the same to me 
as you are. I'm about sick of it, and I 
have a right to be sick of it, too." 

Or he takes a shot at the school and the 
professors. "Aw, I'm tired of that school. 
Nothing to that school but rules. You'd 
think we were a lot of kids in dresses. Why 
don't they treat a fellow like a man?" (Jack 
always says "like" for "as.") "And the pro- 
fessors! What have they got to do but 
throw work onto us? I wish they had to do 
some of it themselves. They'd know what 
slavery was then. And that Prof. Overboy! 

31 



1 



32 The Devil's Periscope 

He's the worst. The others treat us like 
children, but he works us like coal miners, 
besides. And they're always telling us to 
be manly boys," adds Jack, with a fine scorn. 
"Then why don't they treat us like men?" 

''Why, Jack," answers mother, in her half 
plaintive way, ''they don't do that, because 
you are not a man. You aren't twenty-one 
yet." 

'That's it! That's it! The old story. 
Twenty-one ! You don't have to be twenty- 
one to be a man. But no matter what I say 
they keep on repeating that old fable — 'not 
a man!'" 

"It isn't a story, Jack, nor a fable. It's 
the truth." 

Mothers tell valuable truth gently, as only 
mothers can. But headlong Jack doesn't 
believe that anything gentle can be valuable, 
and he does not believe mother. Twenty 
years from now he will be blaming himself 
for not heeding. 

But why wait twenty years — until it is 
too late? Why not see the truth in time to 
make it a "tank" that will get us over the 
shellholes and the barbed wire entangle- 



The DeviVs Periscope 33 

ments of life, not a graveyard spade to use 
in futile digging into our past? It is boys 
like Jack, announcing at seventeen or eigh- 
teen that they are able to match the world, 
who at thirty-five or forty are pointed at (if 
anybody takes enough interest in them to 
point) as ''fellows who never knew how to 
take care of themselves." 

Question: Is eighteen-year-old Jack right 
when he claims to be a man ? 

Answer: No, Jack is not right. But 
mother is. Mother has experience on her 
side, and she has the judgment of states and 
nations, and God's design as well. And 
Jack hasn't a thing but a loud noise. 

Every country assigns a year for the 
recognized beginning of manhood, and that 
year is always around twenty-one. What 
does this mean? It means that before 
twenty-one the state doesn't think we are 
able to take care of ourselves; doesn't trust 
us fully. As a result, we get no vote till 
then; the state will not risk it. Pose as we 
will, and rave about its unfairness to our 
heart's content, it won't go down with the 
state. She insists on treating us as ''kids." 



34 



The Devil's Periscope 



Is this a merely arbitrary proceeding on 
the part of the state? Did she just shut her 
eyes and pick the number twenty-one out of 
a hat, and then say, ''That's it. We'll 
draw the manhood line there"? Or did she 
have a reason in choosing that exact time ? 

Yes; for her action the state had a reason 
that goes as deep as human nature. 

Consider the gradual growth of man — 
God's way of developing us. The first 
twenty-one years of our life are divided by 
nature into three periods of practically equal 
length — distinct periods, each one merging 
slowly into the next — childhood, boyhood, 
youth. Each has its own special work lead- 
ing into the following period, and all are 
preparatory to the day when it can be said 
of us, ''This is a man!" 

As a child — ^from one to about seven years 
— what is the boy doing? He is advancing, 
indeed, but almost exclusively along phy- 
sical lines. Through infancy he must be 
fed, clothed, put to bed, taken up, the most 
helpless of creatures ! He is taught to walk, 
and after that must be watched closely. He 
doesn't know the meaning of danger, H? 



The Devil's Feriscope 35 

must be kept off the streets, away from fire, 
from heights, from dangerous tools, from 
unhealthy foods, poisons. His physical 
health and strength must be tended, his 
sicknesses anticipated. 

These are all difficulties the child must 
overcome, and any serious neglect here will 
be fatal to his whole physical life. What 
force is used to overcome these diflSculties ? 
Largely pure physical force from without. 
The boy's mind is not awake to guide him. 
Some mental acts there are, some judg- 
ments, but reason has not come into play, 
and he must be reasoned for. 

At about seven the reason dawns. The 
body continues to advance in growth, while 
the mind begins little by little to unfold, and 
its special training is taken up. Here is 
where the boy's education in the strict sense 
begins. And the mental situation of the 
boy here is entirely parallel to what his 
physical status was seven years before. He 
is in his mental infancy, and he is helpless 
to advance himself. He must now be 
mentally fed and clothed. Enters the 
teacher to assist the parents, to direct, en- 



36 The DeviVs Periscope 

courage the baby mind. He spends a great 
deal of time on the case, trying to fix the 
mind upon truth, to give it gripping power. 

And how will he develop that budding 
mind? By throwing difficulties before it. 

Just as the baby body had to learn to 
walk, to eat, to utter words — namely, 
through trouble, by falling down often and 
hard, or by weird performances with table- 
ware and with food, or by ridiculous 
babblings that gradually assumed the sound 
of words; so now with the baby mind. 
Trouble comes in once more, but trouble of a 
different order. The teacher starts with the 
alphabet, goes on to spelling, to reading, to 
arithmetic, making the young mind climb 
over one after the other, and constantly 
building the obstacles higher to keep pace 
with the growing strength of the mind. 
Again the idea underneath all this is that 
difficulties surmounted give power. 

And here, too, neglect of the mind's train- 
ing will be fatal to the whole future mental 
life of the boy. Fail to train a child 
mentally between the ages of seven and 
fourteen, and you condemn that child to 



The DeviVs Periscope 37 

drag a half paralyzed mind around with him 
all his life. 

What forces are used in this process of 
mind-training? 

Partly physical force (even boys must be 
punished for balkiness and sulking), but 
principally mental influence is useful at this 
stage. Definite tasks assigned, mistakes 
corrected, advice and direction given, steady 
drill day by day — it all seems so monotonous 
and so commonplace. But the results are 
anything but that. At the end of seven 
years more, instead of a stick in the ground 
we have a young tree beginning to bud. 
Life is beginning to show forth its promise. 

And now comes the big change^ — the third 
preparatory test of the boy and by far the 
most important; the period of life when a 
boy says things to himself that will make or 
mar his future forever — the age of youth, be- 
tween fourteen, or thereabout, and twenty- 
one. 

Here the boy goes a step higher. He 
enters upon his final stage of training. The 
great faculty of the will begins its time of 
special development. Not that the will has 



38 The DeviVs Periscope 

been idle between seven and fourteen. No; 
it has been acting as a responsible agent. 
But it has not, as a rule, been put to its 
strong test until body and mind have been 
tested first and prepared to assist the will in 
its coming struggle. The three forces will 
now operate ; but, as in the first period it was 
the body principally, and in the second the 
mind principally, that was under fire, here 
it is the will that must stand the main attack. 
And this attack will mean "make or break" 
with a boy's character. 

"Attack, you say? That means we are 
going to have difficulties." 

We are, and we'd better expect them, and 
we'll be green fools not to get ready for 
them. 

Where are they going to come from? In 
what quarter shall we look for them? 

This time we won't have to look outside 
ourselves for the trouble. For we shall find 
it right with us, inside us. It is going to 
come from our passions. They are going to 
make a direct challenge to our will and, if 
we don't watch, put it out of commission. 



The Devil's Periscope 39 

It is up to us to decide which force is to win, 
and our decision means for us a lifetime of 
happiness or of misery. It is the one great 
decision of youth — we may say of a hfetime. 

But what are the passions? 

They are powers that develop within us 
during this third period. They have their 
roots in the sensitive side of our being, but 
they have a reaching capacity by which they 
can appeal to our soul, to our will; and if 
we let them go as far as they like they drag 
the will over to their side, pound it into sub- 
mission, make a slave of it, and ride it 
wherever they like. The will is gone then, 
and with your will gone what are you? An 
animal merely. 

Don't imagine, though, that the passions 
are intended to be our enemies. God gives 
them to us, and that means that He wants 
them to be our friends. In themselves they 
are not wild beasts sent to devour us. Nor 
are they things to be ashamed of. They 
will drag us into the gutter and jump on us 
only when we train them to it, and tell them 
they can go as far as they care to with us. 



40 The DeviVs Periscope 

But of themselves they are valuable allies. 
God has given us the passions, but He has 
also given us the power to conquer, to rule, 
to direct them, to make ourselves useful 
through them to God and our neighbor. 
They are tools that must be handled with 
precision and strength. They are tremen- 
dous engines that call for all our nerve to 
drive well, but when we keep them on the 
rails and don't allow them to ditch us they 
will help us to show our full speed. 

What force is to drive these engines? 
Our will. And it is to get its strength from 
the driving process. Just as the body and 
the mind had growth through overcoming 
physical and intellectual difficulties, so the 
will must develop itself in the difficult battle 
of taming the passions and putting them 
where they belong. 

Observe the word ''taming." The pas- 
sions are not, on the one hand, to be crushed, 
nor, on the other, to be molly-coddled, 
spoiled. They are to be checked, directed, 
mastered. They are bhnd forces, and the 
hand of the will must drive them; and 
neglect in driving properly at this crisis is 



« 



The DeviVs Periscope 41 

comparatively just as fatal to the will's 
health and strength as neglect of the infant 
body or the sprouting mind. 

Because, when a boy is fourteen, his will 
is a baby will. It is just beginning to grow, 
just learning how to walk, just taking up 
his alphabet, and spelling out a few words. 
It needs to be fed and clothed like a baby; 
to be kept from falling, to have poisons 
taken out of its hand, and keen-edged tools 
that it would kill itself with. And so, 
though the boy really acts for himself, and 
is responsible for his own deeds, he must still 
be guarded and guided with even more care 
than when he was an infant. Hurts to the 
will are much worse, more incurable, than 
hurts to the body or the mind. 

What is it that can feed the will now, and 
what directs it? 

The answer is easy. God's grace, given 
us principally in the sacraments, the voice of 
our Catholic conscience in each one of us, 
and, together with that, the outside co-opera- 
tion of the guides God has set us — our 
parents and those to whom they entrust us. 
These should handle the ammunition for us 



42 The DeviVs Periscope 

and direct our firing. If we have sense, all 
we have to do is to reach back to the stack, 
and they will hand us the right shell every 
time. Push that into the big gun of our 
will, and with their assistance at finding the 
range we shall keep the passions back in 
their trenches until they surrender. Then 
w^e can call ourselves men, because we have 
done the deed of a man. We have con- 
quered our only dangerous foe and, better 
than that, we have put him to work for us. 

All the mistakes boys make at sixteen, 
seventeen, and those years, are made right 
here; they imagine that they are sixteen 
years all over. Xo, they're not. Their 
body is sixteen, their mind about nine, and 
their will is only two years old. It is just 
learning to toddle, and if left to itself it hits 
every bit of furniture in sight. It needs a 
helping hand from all sides, and continues 
to need it for seven years at least, which 
means until they are twenty-one. And 
seven years is a short time for the training 
of the will, when we consider what a terrible 
force it is in a boy's life, and how its first 
mistakes run through a whole lifetime, and 



« 



The DeviVs Periscope 43 

sink the ship before she is hardly out of port. 

But don't tell Mr. Jack any foolish stuff 
like that. He is eighteen, he is! He can 
take care of himself — he can! Mother is a 
kind lady, but mother has no idea of real 
speed. She can't grasp the fine idea of in- 
dependence, of being one's own master. 
Mother is good for ''kids," but not up to 
date for real men. 

Jack doesn't wish father to talk to him, 
either, nor his professors, nor the priest, nor 
anybody at all who might remotely suggest 
that Sir Jack isn't a real battleship on the 
ocean of life and every gun sweeping the 
horizon. And while he stands on the bridge, 
with his chest thrown out so far that he can't 
see over it, the devil's periscope peeps over 
the surface, a thing like a fish jumps for- 
ward toward Jack's unprotected dread- 
naught, a dull thud amidships staggers the 
Invincible, and she begins to go down by the 
head — the only head on the boat. 

Lucky for our boy Jack then if he has 
the equipment to save himself. Lucky if his 
life-preservers — mother, his home, his priest 
— are near enough to get to him, to drag 



44 The DeviVs Periscope 

him out half full of sea-water and battered 
into insensibility. He may have chased them 
too far away to get to him. In that case he 
is done. He is a thing without a will, sub- 
merged beneath the dark waters of passion, 
a shapeless, jellylike mass, the sport of every 
devil-fish that cares about coming up and 
tearing a bite out of him. 



BE BOLD 

EVERY morning upon rising we say seven 
beautiful words to God, and I wonder 
if we ever realize fully how beautiful these 
words are. They occur in the "Our 
Father" and they are the words, ''Give us 
this day our daily bread." Seven of the 
shortest words we have, almost baby words, 
and so familiar to us that we often, perhaps, 
slip over their surface without thinking of 
what they actually mean. 

"Give us this day our daily bread." Did 
it ever strike you, on looking at them more 
closely, how bold they sound, how daring, 
how imperious? Suppose you were to walk 
up to one of your friends, whom you hap- 
pened to meet this morning in the street, and 
to say: "Hand over to me — now — enough 
money to pay all my expenses for the daJ^ 
No, I don't mean simply lunch money and 
car-fare. I mean enough to cover my board 
bill at home, and the cost of a new hat I need. 
And, yes, I nearly forgot — a ticket to the 

46 



46 



Be Bold 



ball game this afternoon. That will be all 
for this time." 

Doubtless you already see your friend's 
eyes opening as big as an owl's eyes at night, 
with the light of suspicion in them that he is 
dealing with a hold-up man. If he happens 
to be a very good friend of your family, he 
might reach into his pocket and give you 
some change and then hurriedly lose himself 
in the crowd, wondering meantime "what 
kind of a kid that Tompkins boy is." 

But suppose the next day, at the same 
time and place you tried those tactics again. 
This time your friend would excuse himself 
and get down to his office and phone to dad 
that he had better have you attended to, 
hinting darkly at an alienist. In one day 
you have reached the end of your rope in this 
direction. 

"But," you contend, "that isn't the idea I 
have when I ask God for my daily bread. I 
don't mean to be impudent about it. I 
really wish to show my dependence on Him. 
And I don't ask for money directly. I 
leave it to Him to get me what I need, with- 
out dictating how He is to do it." 



Be Bold 47 

Exactly. We are not impudent, we are 
not arrogant, but we are very bold, for all 
that. We simply say: "Give me every- 
thing I need, and I leave it to you, Lord, to 
attend to all the details. If I don't get just 
what I ask for, then I'll get something that 
will be just as good, or better in the long run. 
So I won't worry about it. The whole day's 
work is a very complicated thing, and all I 
have to say is that I expect you to see me 
through it." 

Just as if we were to walk into a huge 
manufacturing plant full of power and 
dangerous machinery, great drive-wheels 
whirling, giant pistons plunging, big belts 
traveling, motors humming, charged wires 
on every hand, with no danger signs, no di- 
rections anywhere, but stunning noise and 
throbbing confusion everywhere, and we 
were to say, "I have to take charge of this 
plant to-day. I don't know a thing about 
what's to happen here, and don't understand 
the machinery, but I want you, Mr. Man- 
ager, to see that I run it properly and get 
through with it safely." No light task for 
Mr. Manager! 



48 Be Bold 

Something like this we say to God as we 
enter upon each day, each dangerous day, 
wherein we do not know at all what is going 
to happen to us, nor how we will meet each 
crisis as it comes with its thousand and one 
tantalizing little needs, with its sudden and 
sharp temptations, its hidden pitfalls, its in- 
sidious friendliness, its crashes of disaster. 
And we simply remark, ''I have to walk 
right into this thing. Lord, and I don't know 
what is coming next. But in case I start to 
make any wrong moves, I depend on you to 
push me into a safe spot every time, so that 
I won't get hurt." 

And we move into the machinery, cool as 
an icicle, confident that the finest details of 
the plant will be at our finger-tips, at the 
precise moment we need them. This is 
genuine boldness, and it is only with God we 
could presume to use such boldness, yet it 
is just the way He wishes us to solve the 
problem of life. Attack your difficulties 
courageously and trust Him to attend to the 
details. 

And does God attend to the details? 
Yes. Down to the verv minutest dot. He 



Be Bold 49 

takes the most elaborate care of us. Even 
when we are not thinking of it, He is waiting 
on us, and not only that. He is employing 
hundreds of others to wait on us. 

How does He do it? Take a random 
example. Consider, say, the oatmeal you 
ate for breakfast this morning. From 
whom did you get it? 'Trom my parents," 
you answer. Yes, but trace it back farther 
and what do we find? We find the grocer, 
and the wholesaler; then the railroads, the 
miller, the farmer and his work ; the seasons, 
the weather, rain and shine, and, at the very 
beginning, God! 

And the ball we use in our games, trace 
that back: parents again to start with, and, 
after them, the dealer, the shipper, the 
makers, the leather and the string, the cattle 
raiser and the wool grower, the grass, rain, 
sunshine — God ! 

Pay a nickel on the street car, and what 
do you get to work for you? The cars and 
rails, time schedule and carmen, furnaces 
and shops, the mines and the miners, the 
mountains and their deposits of ore — and 
God! 



50 Be Bold 

The dish of oatmeal, the baseball, the five- 
cent car ride, we have the whole universe at 
work to provide them for us, but we dis- 
cover, at the last, God back of them all. He 
is fulfilling His part in giving us our daily 
bread. 

Notice, however, how God provides these 
things for us. Not directly, but through 
others. He has so arranged the world that 
we must be helped by others, who, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, minister to our 
wants in ways that we never could think out 
for ourselves. And so delicately adjusted is 
this care of us, that every atom of the uni- 
verse bestirs itself for us whenever we hap- 
pen to need anything. 

''Give us this day our daily bread." 
Bold? It is the last word in boldness. 

Yet, I repeat, it is the very way God 
wishes us to deal with Him. Advance right 
up to Him, say out what it is you need, and 
trust Him to set earth and stars at work 
turning out the thing you ought to have. 
One of His clearest promises is made us in 
this matter. ''Therefore I say to you be not 
solicitous for your life, what you shall eat. 



Be Bold 51 

nor for your body what you shall put on. 
Behold the birds of the air, for they neither 
sow nor do they reap nor gather into barns ; 
and your heavenly Father feedeth them. 
Are not you of much more value than 
they?" 

See the casual, offhand way, yet the cer- 
tain tone in which this promise is made. It 
is taken for granted that we shall be cared 
for. God will easily attend to that. True, 
we sometimes may not get the very thing we 
ask for, but we shall get what fits us, without 
the least doubt. The bird, in building, does 
not always get exactly the twig it seeks, but 
it finally gets a perfectly satisfactory, snug 
little nest to sing from just the same. 

So far the merely physical side of the mat- 
ter. But there is something more important 
in the idea of daily bread. ''Seek ye first 
the kingdom of God and His justice," we 
are told in the same place. This sounds like 
a tremendous request. We are told to ask 
for a kingdom, and for the kingdom of God, 
at that; for justice and for the very justice 
of God. ''This is entirely too much to ask 
for," we would sa)^ "This is arrogance, 



52 Be Bold 

and double arrogance. God's kingdom? 
We don't dare to go so far as this in our 
asking. And His justice! How could we 
carry, in our little selves, such a power as 
that?" 

Nevertheless just that is what we are as- 
sured will infallibly be ours for the asking, 
and we are told to ask for it ''first," before 
anything else whatever. You see how God 
acts with us. ''Do not worry about the 
small things. Ask for the big things — the 
one great possession that is worth having. 
And have no roundabout prehminaries over 
it, either, in the way of asking for little 
things first. But boldty call for the owner- 
ship of My kingdom, which I have prepared 
for you, and the other things shall be added 
to you," shall be provided as a matter of 
course. 

This is why we can be bold with God, be- 
cause He tells us to be bold, to cast all our 
care upon Him, to demand, and to insist 
upon nothing less than His kingdom as a 
gift, and to follow Him about until we get 
it. Everywhere, over and over again in the 
Scripture, we are promised God's kingdom 



Be Bold 53 

if we ask for it, and God always stands by 
His promises. 

What is this kingdom? You know the 
answer. In this world it is God's grace. 
His actual presence in our souls, which is 
the sole passport to His glory in heaven. 
Do we need this grace? Young as we are, 
we know perfectly well that this is our one 
imperative need — the daily bread of the soul. 
Against the temptations of the devil, the 
world, the flesh, we must have this daily 
bread, God's strength, with us, if we would 
work hard, fight well, beat off the evil one, 
advance toward our rest and our home in 
heaven. And if God reigns in us and with 
us, we are sure that no enemy will prevail 
over us and possess us. 

And how does God provide us with His 
grace? 

You remember the wonderful conversion 
of St. Paul, how he was struck down from 
his horse in a blinding flash of light, and at 
his quick cry, ''Lord, what wilt Thou have 
me do?" the answer was, "Go into the city, 
and there it will be told thee what thou must 
do!" Jesus, who was speaking to Paul, 



54 Be Bold 

would not tell him directly what to do, but 
sent him to an appointed person, and after 
Paul had fulfilled this condition, then the 
kingdom of God, grace, was strong within 
him. 

So it will be with us. We pray to God, 
ask for soul help, for ''daily bread." And 
He will help us; but consistently with His 
plan. And as He provides our bodily wants 
through others, so in feeding our hunger of 
soul, His grace will very often come to us 
through the instrumentality of others. So 
God has decreed that, under normal condi- 
tions, the original grace of Baptism, the 
healing medicine of Penance, the upbuilding 
and fortifying strength of the Eucharist, all 
come to us at the hands of His minister, the 
priest. This is a truth familiar to us from 
our childhood. 

But over and above this, there are critical 
periods of our life when we need graces in 
between. There are frequent times of 
doubt, of bewilderment, of depression, of in- 
sistent temptation, when we feel nonplussed, 
balked at every turn; when everything 
breaks wrong, and we don't understand why. 



Be Bold 55 

nor see our path an inch ahead, but we know 
that we are in danger. God is near us here, 
too, and wishes us to get His help ; but again, 
as with St. Paul, He will give it through 
others. 

''Lord, what shall I do?" we ask of God, 
His answer will be to send somebody across 
our path, someone He wishes us to consult, 
some adviser whom we may trust, and be 
guided by. Sometimes we forget this, and 
fail to hear God telling us to ask the one 
appointed to assist us. 

Who shall this adviser be? It will be 
somebody who has the power from God to 
advise us and to save us, someone to whom 
God has given us in charge, father, mother, 
our confessor, some wise counsellor whom 
we feel that we can, we must confide in. In 
this matter God is not as strict with us as 
He was with St. Paul. Paul was sent to a 
certain street, to a certain house, to a certain 
man, and to no other. We have a choice, 
but God expects us to use properly and yet 
boldly, the freedom He allows us. 

Have we never sat down and had a good 
talk with somebody who understood us, who 



56 Be Bold 

grasped our particular trouble almost before 
we had fully stated it, who solved it with a 
swift and calm accuracy that astonished us, 
and who directed us again into the road we 
had stumbled from? And after that did we 
not pulse with new hf e, vigor, courage, to go 
ahead and keep going? Were we not al- 
most hilarious with gladness that we acted 
as we did, with all this anxiety and fear and 
corroding pain suddenly stopped, all the 
staleness swept out of our life, all its youth 
renewed ? 

To be alone in such crises of soul is suffer- 
ing, indeed. But it is more, it is real 
danger. See to it, that no matter what 
others do, you at least, have a friend, an 
adviser, who will not let you be alone in 
trouble. And once you have chosen, do not 
allow yourself to wander far into trouble 
without demanding prompt aid from the one 
whom God has chosen for you, to give you 
that daily bread of advice, of co-operation, 
of support, which will alone deliver your 
soul from evil. For, boldly calling on him 
whom God has sent to you, you are boldly 
calling upon God. 



FOLLOW YOUR INTERFERENCE 

He that loveth correction loveth knowl- 
edge; but he that hateth reproof is foolish. 
Proverbs xii, 1. 

RECENTLY I was a spectator at a football 
game between two teams of about 
equal weight and speed. The combat 
waged on fairly even terms for a while, and 
then one team began to urge its way surely 
toward the opponents' goal. The losers be- 
gan to be caught behind their line when try- 
ing to advance the ball, and their big losses 
came when one of their best men, appar- 
ently, was carrying the ball. He was a 
half-back with great speed and dodging 
ability, and he seemed to be depended upon 
for gains. But he didn't make the gains. 
After a fast start, a spurt forward, there 
came a swerving, a wriggling, a staggering 
backward, and finally a thumping ''down" 
under a heap of opponents, five or ten yards 
back of where the ball had been put into 

57 



58 Follow Your Interference 

play. This went on until a particularly 
disastrous loss brought dismay, with its ac- 
companying disgust and indignation, to the 
"rooters" for the losing team. Out of the 
discordance of groans, gasps, yelps, and 
frenzied screams, there rose one big voice, 
dominant and angry, that swept across the 
field to the unfortunate half-back. 
"Ah — follow your interference!" 
Then turning to the crowd near by, the 
voice said, "That's the trouble with that fel- 
low. He doesn't need any interference; he 
thinks he can win the game all by himself." 
The man with the big voice knew football, 
and knew that the essence of the game is 
"interference." The man with the ball must 
be protected from the enemy by the other 
ten men, who are his "curtain of fire." 
They hold off the attack, and at the same 
time urge their man forward by every means 
the game allows. Often he is hurt by his 
own men, bumped and bruised, but he en- 
dures it willingly just to get ahead. And 
the player who works with his interference 
best and values it most is the best and most 
valuable player. 



Follow Your Interference 59 

Indeed, the same idea of interference is 
the basis of every game. In baseball, for 
example, the batter strives to interfere with 
the pitched ball so as to drop it safely some- 
where in fair ground. The ''outs" on the 
other hand, try to interfere with the batted 
ball so that it will not go "safe." And here 
again, the better interference wins. 

All boys see this clearly, and in football, 
baseball, and all their games they practise 
strenuously, and are coached continuously to 
excel in this one idea of following their in- 
terference. 

There is a battle of greater importance 
than any fought on the football or baseball 
field — the battle of life, in which each of us, 
my dear boys, has a goal to gain, a contest 
to win. And I sometimes wonder if in this 
battle we realize the necessity of "following 
our interference." 

"Interference!" exclaims my young 
friend Chesty Charlie. "What do I want 
with interference? I can get along without 
that. 'Live and let live' is my motto, and I 
don't want any interference, because I don't 
need it." 



60 Follow Your Interference 

Is Charlie right? Don't we need inter- 
ference? Then let us ask ourselves where 
we would be now if it were not for the care 
our parents have had for us during the years 
we are alive. They interfered for us against 
hunger and thirst, and cold and heat, and 
sickness and death. They gave us hearth 
and home and a welcome to the world. 
They made friends for us, put us in sur- 
roundings where we would be appreciated 
and loved ; sent us to school, gave us clothing 
to wear, a bed to sleep in; trained us to 
prayer and right living. Take them away 
this moment, and what would we have ? We 
would lose the one great harbor that takes 
us in from every storm, the one shelter we 
can turn to when every other wearies us or 
rejects us, the harbor of home. And home, 
with everything that the word contains for 
us, is the work of our parents. 

There is the mighty interference that has 
been put up for us, and that, too, when we 
didn't have sense enough even to ask for it. 
Our parents have kept off from us our three 
great enemies — the enemy of our body, sick- 
ness and death; of our mind, ignorance; and 



Follow Your Interference 61 

our deadliest enemy, the enemy of our will, 
immorality. 

Have these enemies been lying in wait for 
us? We know they have, and they make 
no disguise of it. Who, therefore, have 
kept us alive? Our parents. Who have 
driven ignorance from us? Our parents. 
They have entrusted us to schools, instruc- 
tors, who would care for us in their stead. 
Who have pushed irmnorality away from us ? 
Again, oilr parents. They had us baptized, 
brought into the true Church, fed by the 
Sacraments, surrounded by every safeguard 
that the soul could require, put under the 
care of God's priests, who are sworn to love 
and protect us. 

Let any boy candidly ask himself, ''What 
would I be now, to-day, in thought, in word, 
in action and habits, if it were not for the 
Church and her priests?" The answer we 
must give tells us that priest and parent have 
indeed ''interfered" for us, have kept off 
foes, have enabled us to make what advance 
we have made. 

"But I don't need it now," insists Charlie 
of the Chest. "That stage is past. I am 



62 Follow Your Interference 

strong, and I know enough, and I am pretty 
straight, too. I can go on alone now." 

Which is just like saying, "I can walk, 
and I know where I am going, and there- 
fore I don't need any police protection. 
Take the police away! I know a hold-up 
man when I see one." My dear boy, the 
hold-up fraternity will simply fall in love 
with you, and throw their arms right around 
you. 

That's the trouble with some boys. A 
stage comes in a boy's life when he becomes 
frightfully intolerant of any help. He is 
growing to a man, his passions are develop- 
ing strongly, and he imagines he has power 
in him sufficient for any emergency, when 
in reality he hasn't enough to carry him up 
to the next meal. But don't try to correct 
him, to advise him. He doesn't know a 
little bit. He knows it all. Don't try to 
help him. You only get in his way. Keep 
out! You are interrupting the great 
thoughts of a great mind, blocking the 
matured plans of a noble, perfectly self- 
sufficient soul. Venture not too close with 
profane touch. You'll find it's a live wire 



Follow Your Interference 63 

and it will knock you down. Avaunt! 
Ha! Here goes speed, dodging ability — 
minus interference! The result, of course, 
is that after the first dash there comes a 
crash, a crunching noise, a large heap of 
wreckage, with our hero blotted out under 
the debris, about forty yards back of where 
he started. 

It's the same little drama of the con- 
fidence game in three chapters : 

Chapter I. They can't get me. 

Chapter II. Ouch! 

Chapter III. They got me! Funeral 
notice later. 

The moral? You can pick it out for 
yourselves, my dear boys. It is: Love 
correction. Not only endure it, but love it, 
ask for it, assume a constant attitude of wel- 
come toward it. Those who correct you are 
not your enemies, but your well-wishers, 
your advisers for the future that they see in 
you. They don't interfere with you, they 
interfere for you. 

Insist on having some coaching, some in- 
terference, some advice. ''If thou see a 
man of understanding," the Scripture tells 



64 Follow Your Interference 

us, ''go to him early in the morning, and let 
thy foot wear the steps of his doors." 

Early in the morning of life is the time to 
lay the first stones of the foundation of 
''understanding/' of knowing how to take 
up the battle of life every boy must face. 
He has as yet no experience. His enemies 
have it. And the single course of safety 
that lies open to him is to "follow his inter- 
ference." Every boy ought to have a friend 
in whom he confides, whom he trusts abso- 
lutely, be it his father, his mother, liis con- 
fessor, or any true friend to whom he can 
open his heart. Discover your enemies to 
this chosen guide and he will interfere for 
you, so guide and guard you as to make 
room for you to move in freely and vigor- 
ously. And that movement will be always 
a forward movement toward the goal. 



FEATHERS AND LEAD 

THERE is a time of the year when the call 
of the open comes to us clear and 
strong. When the snows have melted, and 
the sun rides higher every day, with here and 
there an especially hot day that makes us 
think of midsummer; and a dreamy mist 
hangs in the air and takes the sharp edge off 
the dismal winter scenery; when the birds 
tweet and chirp and chatter, and the trees 
pop forth their millions of little green buds, 
and the flowers look out from unexpected 
nooks, like wondering infants; when the 
crack of the baseball bat punctures the 
rattling thud, thud, of the ball in the catch- 
ing glove, like the triangle in the village 
band; and the circus comes to town, spick 
and span out of winter quarters — oh, joj^ 
overflows everywhere, real, irresponsible, 
absent-minded bacchanalian joy, in every 
place but one — the classroom ! 

The classroom ! What an ugly sound the 
very word makes! In the entire range of 

65 



66 Feathers and Lead 

the English language perhaps the most 
cacophonous vocable! Listen to it! Be- 
ginning with a sharp gurgling noise, as of 
some helpless captive strangling, with a 
poisonous serpentine hiss in the center, and 
at the end a melancholy underground 
rumble that rhymes with ''gloom" and 
''doom/' the whole combination reminds one 
of nothing so much as of the B as tile, or the 
Mamertine prison, or any of those clanking 
subterranean dungeons we read about in the 
history. 

Yes, "prison" is the word that best de- 
scribes the classroom, especially in spring. 
At a time when all nature is free, singing 
and playing in the sunshine, the deadly class- 
room continues its suffocating work. 
Through the long, dragging day, its vic- 
tims, shut in, all but chained down, creep 
through a hideous monotony. Work, work, 
nothing but work. And the heat ! Stifling ! 
The blood rushes to the head as the galley 
slaves bend over the intolerable drudgery, 
pegging away like cobblers — only cobblers 
can at least pound on something and whistle 
and make a little bit of noise anyway. This 



Feathers and Lead 67 

has to be soundless. Sh-sh-sh! How low 
the ceiling is getting! And the chalk dust! 
Settling constantly on a fellow's lungs, as it 
does, he could easily get tuberculosis. It's 
positively unsanitary, and the health au- 
thorities ought to hear about it. No wonder 
a fellow gets sleepy here. He's getting 
asphyxiated, nothing else. Oh, it's a 
terrible life! Three yawns for the class- 
room ! St-r-retch ! 

Why is it that when everything else is glad 
and rejoicing, we, the classroom boys, must 
thus suffer starvation of spirit? Why can- 
not we be like nature, adapt ourselves to the 
jollity of the season, break loose from the 
buzz and the whir of school machinery, and 
swing free into the current of babbling 
laughter eddying all about us? Nature is 
enjoying a refreshing recreation. Why 
can't we be in tune with nature? Hey? 

My dear boys, your argument is 
startling strong. As my young friend 
Billy, the newsboy, says, "You spoke a 
mouthful that time!" It is a very good idea 
this, of being in tune with nature, and I 
heartily agree with it. 



68 Feathers and Lead 

But what is nature doing in spring? Is 
not all this gladness that she reveals pre- 
cisely the result of work? All this freshness 
of new life, all this color and song and 
flutter, what does it mean? It means simply 
that nature is hard at work refurnishing her 
house, and singing as she does it. 

The fine soft carpets of grass are being 
spread over the floor, but to do this every 
single tiny blade of grass is working away 
as hard as it can, drawing its material from 
the soil and the air, and sturdily pushing its 
way through the ground until it finally 
waves its Lilliputian sword in triumph. 

The happy buds come peeping along the 
tree-branches, each at its own little window, 
but, with all their fun, they are working 
every moment of the time, reaching down 
for sap and up for air-foods and kneading 
these together into a leaf, a blossom, finally 
into luscious fruit. 

The birds, darting flashes of cardinal, or 
bright yellow, or blue, sing deliriously all the 
while, but they work deliriously all the while, 
too. No builder ever worked harder than 
our little brothers, the birds, pulling and 



Feathers and Lead 69 

dragging and carrying and weaving and 
dove-tailing until they have those nests 
finished. 

And the stream babbles away, but what 
is it doing? Carrying fresh water every- 
where it can and draining off the winter 
snows. And the clouds are tumbling over- 
head in big clumsy games of tag and leap- 
frog, but all the time they are rolling up 
huge reservoirs of rain for proper distribu- 
tion later. 

Yes, nature is frolicking, and laughing 
aloud, and cheerily calling, doing fine choral 
singing with symphony orchestra accom- 
paniment, but she is never working harder 
than she is right now. Nature isn't a per- 
former who sits down at the piano and picks 
out a one-finger tune in the treble. She 
makes the other four fingers work to build 
up that air in the treble and supports them 
in the bass with five other working fingers. 
She works on the principle that it takes nine 
working fingers to build up the proper at- 
mosphere around that one-finger tune to 
keep it from sounding idiotic. Nine ounces 
of work to one of fun is her proportion, and 



70 Feathers and Lead 

fun which is unaccompanied by work is silly 
— is her idea. Nature always looks best 
when working hardest. 

"Huh!" growls Sleepy Steve. "That's 
all right about nature. She ought to work 
now. She's been asleep all winter. But 
we've been working all winter, and it's our 
turn for the sleep." 

Well, suppose that nature does take a 
vacation. She takes it in the winter and 
that's a pretty poor time. And you get 
your vacation in the summer, Steve, just the 
time you like. But — 

The fact is that nature does not sleep in 
winter. She works then, too, even if not so 
intensely. The winds, the snows, frost, ice, 
these are only further manifestations of her 
activity. If things are not growing in 
winter, work is going on, nevertheless, get- 
ting ready for the growth of spring. Sup- 
plies are being packed up, laid away, cov- 
ered over for the coming season. And thus 
one season always works in preparation for 
the next. 

And so we have our school seasons, each 
forecasting and fitting into the next. And 



Feathers and Lead 71 

the spring season is a very important one, 
looking forward, as it does, to the final sea- 
son of examinations. Is it hard? Yes, it is. 
Nobody denies it. Each season has its own 
peculiar difficulties, and the spring difficul- 
ties are real ones, and big ones. It is a 
rather unbalanced sensation simultaneously 
to carry a head as light as a feather and feet 
as heavy as lead; it is a trifle unearthly to 
see the lines of print begin to revolve like a 
merry-go-round and to hear through the fog 
a mysterious phantom voice that we had be- 
lieved, up to a moment ago, was the voice of 
the professor. All this is a situation which 
demands appreciation, not to say sympathy. 
Even though, within the hour, happening to 
step out upon the campus, the professor ob- 
serves the sudden miraculous rejuvenation 
of the supposed mental and physical wreck. 
There he is, turning at the crack of the bat, 
dashing back into deep center field, and, with 
the eye of an eagle and the quickness of a 
cat, picking the ball out of the air with one 
hand. It is such a relief to his friends to 
know that Bobbie has his health back. 
This does not at all prove, however, that 



72 Feathers and Lead 

the "gone" feeling Bob suffered in the class- 
room was a fake. Xo, it simply means that 
studying in spring time is harder than ball 
playing. And the difficulty the boy meets 
here is precisely the temptation to substitute 
the game for the work, the pleasant activity 
for the toilsome; to argue that because Bob 
doesn't feel like working it isn't the time to 
work, and because he has a strong appetite 
for play, then play must be devoured to the 
last shred. 

When we begin to think this way, my dear 
boys, let us first go back to the little lesson 
we have learned from nature. Xature 
never plays unless she is working. She's 
gladdest when she sings, and she sings only 
when she is busy. 

And add this note. Xothing in this 
world that is worth doing is without difS- 
cultv. So that whenever vou hear that a 
man has a sinecure, that he is ''taking it 
easy," you may be certain he isn't doing 
much that is worth while. Even good ball 
playing is difficult. What, for example, is 
harder work than trying to hit a really good 



Feathers and Lead 73 

pitcher? Swing one — swing two — swing 
three! Then back to the bench! And it's 
an awfully hard walk to that bench, with an 
accompaniment of "Oh's!" from the blood- 
thirsty crowd, and deep groans, and derisive 
catcalls, and cries of ''You swing like a 
gate!" ''Get another glass eye!" and 
similar last century remarks that make you 
feel like a man-eater. 

So with our entertaining spring visitor, 
the circus. Nothing seems easier than to 
belong to a circus. The gaudy parade, the 
glittering costumes, the fine horses in their 
tinkling trappings, and blankets of cloth of 
gold, the odd, amusing animals, the bands, 
and the dear old calliope steam-tooting 
away — why it's just a big romp all the time. 
And yet — if we could only see the clown, 
whose existence seems one long, brainless 
cackle, practising for dear life on every one 
of his hits; and the riders, so perfectly and 
easily poised; and the wonderful aeronauts 
flying from trapeze to trapeze, smiling 
brilhantly as they alight and swing upon 
their dizzy perches — if we could only see 



74 Feathers and Lead 

them working on every inch of their move- 
ments, we should be astonished that it takes 
so much trouble simply to play well. 

Xow, we have work to do that is worth 
doing, and it has its own difficulty — the in- 
sidious spring fever. Then tackle the 
spring fever problem in the right way. 
Look ahead a bit then, and resolve that we 
will finish the year well. The champion 
distance runner always has a spurt for the 
finish. He times himself all through the 
race so that, no matter how wobbly he feels 
at the three quarters, he still has saved that 
absolutely necessary spurt at the end, and 
he doesn't rest till he crosses the tape. 

It is something the same with us. The 
finish is in sight. If you have a spurt in 
you, and you ought to have it. now is the 
time to let it out. Don't rest till the race 
is over, no matter how things begin to blur 
before your eyes now. Xo matter how 
wooden your legs feel, don't let the wood 
go to your head. Keep at the work. Fight 
off the imps of sleepiness and laziness and 
mischief, and that "what's the use" feeling, 
and fix vouT mind on one thincr, that vou are 



41 



Feathers and Lead 75 

not going to fall out before the finish. 
Cross that tape. Then you will have a va- 
cation that will mean what the word says. 
It will be vacant of that one most undesir- 
able summer boarder, that grinning skeleton 
rattling in the closet — the ghastly ''flunk." 



COME, FIDO! 

MAKING a short stay in a town through 
which I was traveling, I tried to find 
there a boy in whom I was interested. 
Somewhat to my surprise I failed to dis- 
cover a trace of him anywhere in the spots 
where normally he should be found. I met 
a gentleman who I knew had been desirous 
to assist the boy, and I asked him about 
Arthur. 

''Arthur is turning out badly," he an- 
swered. "In fact, I think he is about done 
now. I wished to advance him in my busi- 
ness, when I noticed he began to drift in 
the wrong direction almost from the start. 
I inquired at his home and found that he 
had become sullen and insolent there, inde- 
pendent, careless about home rules; let 
church go by the board, ran with a fast set, 
kept late, or, rather, early hours. In short, 
he headed straight for the rocks, and hit 
them. Of course, I couldn't keep him in a 

76 



Come, Fido! 77 

position of trust and had to drop him. 
Haven't heard much about him since; but 
it's easy guessing." 

I expressed my surprise. 

''Yes," he said. ''It is surprising, isn't 
it? He seemed so steady while at college, 
and he hadn't been home a month when he 
cut loose. The change came all of a sud- 
den. The college couldn't have done much 
for him. Catholic college, too!" 

Arthur's case is not an isolated one. 
Every once in a while we find a boy who 
has been regular as an automaton at college, 
docile at home, with no complaints against 
him, with satisfactory reports coming in 
steadily, a boy who has been apparently well 
trained, turning right about almost the day 
after his school days close and smashing into 
bits every expectation that we held of him. 
And we wonder at the change. 

But perhaps if we knew the real truth of 
his life at college we should think the change 
in Arthur neither sudden nor surprising. 
We might see that the regularitj^ the 
docility, the quiet deference were not 
genuine, but only skin-deep; that he was 



78 Come, Fido! 

merely wearing a disguise to be changed, a 
mask to be dropped, at the first opportunity. 
We might discover that the training Arthur 
was supposed to be getting was really not 
training at all, and that what appeared to 
be solid down to the foundation was mere 
veneering. Arthur looks good, but he is 
only a counterfeit bill. And the college 
isn't to blame for it in the least. 

Perhaps the boy himself, if he thought 
enough about himself, could tell a story that 
would eliminate all surprise. Perhaps, if 
candid, he could clearly demonstrate to us 
the fallacy of the idea that school or college 
can make a boy willy-nilly. There are 
people who have the idea that a school is 
just like a bottle factory. Throw in the 
glass at one end of something, light a fire 
and turn a crank, and out hops a bottle at 
the other end. And so we have otherwise 
sensible persons exclaiming: "My! A 
Catholic college — and look at the boys it 
turned out!" The proper criticism of the 
college being, in such cases, that the college 
didn't turn him out long before. 

A college isn't a manufacturing establish- 



Come, Fido! 79 

ment. It guarantees to do certain things, 
of course, and to do them to the full extent 
of its power; but there's always a big ''if" 
attached to the guarantee. A furniture 
house can promise to take lumber, to put it 
through the machinery, and to give us an 
outjjut of tables, desks, chairs, exactly ac- 
cording to contract. But a college will 
never make a contract like that. Why not? 
Because you are feeding boys into your col- 
lege machinery, and a boy can monkey with 
the buzz saws as he passes through. He can 
turn every edge that tries to press upon him 
to get him into shape, and the college can't 
prevent him. You can feed a boy into one 
end of the college machine and he'll come out 
at the other end a hard-finished lobster. 

"It can't be done," the uninitiated will 
explain. 

Yes, it can. Our little Arthur has done 
it; has gone all the way through the com- 
plicated college course and can't walk a step 
without falling down. Wonderful! How 
did he do it? 

Well, Arthur belongs to a somewhat com- 
mon class of boys who fail to think. We 



80 Come, Fido! 

shall not pause to examine why it is that 
Arthur never did any thinking for himself. 
Maybe because he was always a pet at home, 
and had mother taming his hair for him and 
big sister patting his pink bow tie until he 
was about fifteen. Maybe because he was 
just lazy, and the family was fooled into be- 
lieving it was growing pains. At any rate, 
there goes little Arthur off on the train, with 
mother and sisters Marj and Millie getting 
bumped into by everybody because they 
can't see through their tears. And even 
father looks a grim look, off toward the hori- 
zon. Xo doubt they love Arthur. They 
have carried him along all their lives. Xow 
the train carries him off. 

At his journey's end the bus carries him 
to the school. And right here Art throws 
himself into the lap of the college and has it 
carry him along. The days go by and 
Arthur does what looks like some work. 
He passes his examinations and he never 
breaks violently any of the big college rules. 
But, though he seems to move, he is really 
asleep all the way. He never thinks why he 
does things. All his work goes on mechan- 



Come, Fido! 81 

ically and through routine, because others 
are doing it, because it is the custom, because 
it is in the atmosphere. 

He goes to church, says his prayers, makes 
his confessions; he studies, plays, sings, has 
fun; but it isn't Arthur who is doing these 
things. It is a wooden image drifting 
along with the crowd. Whatever they do 
he does. He is like one of a flock of sheep. 
He drifts down the road, or strays out into 
the fields, or drinks at the water's edge, 
simply because the others do. Ask him 
where he is going, he will answer, ''Where 
the others are going;" or why he goes to con- 
fession, or plays baseball, the answer he 
ought to give would be the same, ''Because 
the others do." 

It never occurs to him to ask, "Why do 
the others do it? What reason lies at the 
back of it all? How should I get along if 
the 'others' were to drop out?" No ; he trots 
along at the tailboard of the bandwagon, 
perfectly happy if he can look back and 
watch the dust. his feet kick up. 

Artie's trouble is that he has depended on 
the game of "follow the leader" all his life. 



82 Come, Fido! 

He began by following mama around the 
house, continued by chasing papa down the 
sidewalk, developed by tracking the neigh- 
borhood "kids" all over the district, and ends 
by hitching on to any crowd he happens to 
be in, and drags along after it. He is just 
a jolly little follower, Artie is. 

Jolly only for a time, however. All 
through his life until the end of school he 
has happened to be in a good atmosphere, 
with a respectable crowd. He has gone 
where they have gone, and he has looked 
good. He has never considered himself as 
apart from these surroundings, as an in- 
dividual with his own responsibilities, with 
personal duties that reach down to the very 
deepest inside of him. It is the jogging 
from outside that has kept him going. He 
has never got up steam inside; never has 
thought of his soul seriously, nor does more 
than skim over its surface. So he drifts with 
every current. He is a perfect example of 
the I-don't-know-where-I'm-going-but-I'm 
on- way boy. He just floats, like soap. 

As we said, he is lucky with this for a 



Come, Fido! 83 

while. He has merely followed ; but, owing 
to the decent crowd he was in, he never was 
led astray. But school closes. The world 
opens on him and the crowds change. Then 
it is that things begin to happen. Arthur is 
the same little follower still, but the breaks 
in the luck are against him now. And he 
begins to follow down dark alleys, into dirty 
corners, through filthy puddles and slimy 
pools, tied to this other crowd, which is not a 
Catholic college crowd. 

He has never had, and he hasn't now, the 
least hint of inner power. No individuality. 
He is a being who is led along like a puppy 
on a chain. Wherever the chain pulls, the 
puppy follows. He does the "Come, Fido," 
act well enough for the movies. He looks 
fluffy and cute at the beginning of the act, 
but he comes out of it the sloppiest looking 
animal that ever pawed its way out of a 
mudhole, with enough cans tied to him to 
keep him running wild the rest of his life. 

It all looks sudden, but we know it wasn't 
sudden. He was getting ready for this all 
through. He lived for it, in spite of what 



84 Come, Fido! 

any college could do for him. He followed 
anything that came along, regardless of 
what it was or why, or where it was going. 
He trained for this finish, and he got what 
he trained for. 



GET ALONG WITH YOURSELF 

WHENEVER skillful work is to be done 
with an instrument the capacity of 
that instrument, its power, its reach, its 
limitations must be known. And the better 
these are known the better the work accom- 
plished. 

The hunter will have his own dog and gun 
for his hunting trip. He is unhappy with a 
borrowed dog, because he doesn't know what 
it can or will do. But his own dog! He 
can predict Pomp's every turn; knows his 
speed, his sagacity, his pecuKar little turns 
and special signals. Pompey will never 
take him a foot out of the way. The same 
with his gun. Its weight, its balance, its in- 
dividual response to its owner puts it in a 
class by itself. The hunter will use no 
other, because he understands his gun; and 
they work well together as a result. 

The engineer on the road is proud of his 
engine. He knows it to the last rivet, and 
can tell what every tiniest throb of the giant 
means. He knows just how it will take 

85 



86 Get Along With Yourself 

every foot of the road, where to ''let her 
out/' and where to go soft-footed, can fore- 
tell exactly its behavior at every curve and 
grade. In his hands it is like an intelligent 
thing. He has studied his engine and 
knows what it can do. 

The captain of his ship can take her 
through spots where another would wreck 
her. The captain knows his ship through 
storm and calni, deeps and shallows. An- 
other man has to guess, because he hasn't 
studied the ship. And in the crisis he makes 
the \\Tong guess. 

The ball player must have his own bat and 
his own glove for the game. This bat is just 
the right weight, plus some undefinable 
thing that makes the bat "his bat." The 
glove "fits his hand," and "hand and glove" 
are proverbial friends. 

We might go on with an enumeration of 
this kind through all the dealings of men 
with men as well as of men with things. 
The captain of a team must know his men; 
the general feel the heart of his army. In 
social hfe our experience tells us the same 
truth. At our very first contact with peo- 



Get Along With Yourself 87 

pie whom we are supposed to work with or 
hve with we study them as they do us ; and 
we get along with them, we let them help us, 
or do not let them, in proportion as we truly 
know them. Out of a variety of characters 
we make our choice. And some we use 
more, some less, some we reject altogether as 
totally injurious to us. They in like man- 
ner use us or refuse us. But the successful 
choice any of us make depends at last on the 
way we know them, on the way we have ex- 
amined and tested them. 

To know the tools we work with is the 
basis of success in any line. And knowing 
our tools means that we have examined 
them. Not in a hurry-up, slapdash, super- 
ficial way, but, as near as we can come to it, 
down to the last atom that we ought to know. 
You are never going to get anywhere with 
your work by giving your tools merely the 
''once over" and ''letting them go at that." 
The result will be that you will let them go 
at that. They will fly out of your hand and 
hit you in the head ; and if they don't knock it 
off, they will at least make the splinters fly. 
If a man wants to build a bridge, he has to 



88 Get Along With Yourself 

know more about it than the beautiful spans 
that float over it. Those spans rest upon 
piers; the piers are sunk in a swift current; 
the current sweeps over a bed of shifting 
sand or jeHied mud. And the builder has to 
grope and slosh down through that mud un- 
til he gets to the real bed that holds up the 
sand and the mud and the current and the 
piers and the spans. The first thing he de- 
pends on in his work is the last thing he came 
to in his examination of his tools. And the 
big tool in bridge building is the foundation. 
Disagi^eeable task, but it had to be done. 
Had he been satisfied to begin his work by 
giving the river the "once over," he would 
finish it by giving his bridge the ''once over." 

We have been talking about getting along 
with dogs and guns and engines and bridges 
and people. To get along with them we 
must know them, and to know them we must 
examine them. This is without doubt im- 
portant work in our lives, the difficult art of 
dealing with the multitudinous things that 
swarm outside us. 

But there is something in life far more im- 
portant to each one of us and far more difii- 



II 



Get Along With Yourself 89 

cult. Other things, however worth while, 
we may regard as, at the least, accidental. 
There is one thing essential, and it is not out- 
side us, but within us. It is, in fact, our own 
selves; and the real art of living is the art 
of getting along with ourselves. It is fail- 
ure to get along with ourselves which is the 
final cause of all our unhappiness and miser- 
able discontent. 

What does this mean? "Ourselves" 
means a body and a soul; a body with its 
vivid and ever-active sensitive instincts and 
imagination working through its faculties of 
sight and touch and hearing, each with its 
separate craving, and all reaching, with ter- 
rific speed and in every direction, to gather 
in some specially good thing for itself ; and a 
soul with its memory winging constantly 
through the past ; its mind digging into pres- 
ent things with feverish haste, and at the 
same time tugging at the chains of the pres- 
ent to get away into a future that it has al- 
ready dreamed out for itself; and back of 
these the will, swinging now this way, now 
that, over the whole circle of these tangled 
calls from every side, trying to weave a bar- 



90 Get Along With Yourself 

mony out of this jungle full of devouring 
animals, each of them looking for something 
to eat. 

Consider what can happen every minute. 
The eyes, for example, want to see some- 
thing. Off they start in their direction, try- 
ing to drag the whole combination with 
them. The ears would hear something, the 
hands reach out to something. Away they 
are, down diverging paths, tearing the soul 
like wild horses. Or the memory would 
ramble to a favorite corner and dig there; 
or the imagination fly into a dangerous soli- 
tude and batten there; or the mind shoot 
down some black canyon of thought and 
dash back and forth like a bat. And any of 
these, while in full career, may stop suddenly 
and dart off at the most unexpected angles ; 
or reverse without warning on the very track 
where they have just sped forward, crashing 
into everything on the way, and, just be- 
cause it must have its prey, crunching the 
whole system into scrap-iron. 

"What an exciting game!" I hear you say. 

Exciting? Yes, boys; it's the game of 
your life. 



Get Along With Yourself 91 

Imagine a great railway system, with its 
network of roads webbing the countr5\ As- 
semble its whole flock of locomotives, steam 
at full head, fired to the limit constantly. 
Drop every block signal, open every switch, 
cut every telegraph wire along the road. 
Then turn loose simultaneously these en- 
gines at various starting points on different 
tracks. And the system is a mangled heap 
of debris. 

It sounds crazy, doesn't it? Yet, that 
very thing happens to many a boy. You've 
heard men called ''wrecks." And when 
they say a man is a wreck, they do not mean 
that he has met any misfortune from the out- 
side — business failure, disappointment, home 
ties broken. After a sickness they will use 
the word, but always with the prefix, ''a 
physical wreck." But when the word 
"wreck" is used simply, it always means that 
something much higher, better than these is 
gone. He has lost the man in him; he has 
lost himself. And for that they always sim- 
ply blame the man. The other reverses he 
could not help ; this he has done to himself. 

How did he begin? If you track it back, 



92 Get Along With Yourself 

you will find that as a boy he didn't watch 
those big engines within him. One of them 
got loose. He let it run. And, different 
from the railway engines, this loose one 
starts the others, one by one. The devil 
sneaks in, cuts all the wires that could carry 
danger messages, throws all switches, until 
everything is wide open all over the system, 
with the central office shut off, and the gen- 
eral manager — the boy's will — doped in his 
chair. Then one horrible smash, and we see 
a thing that has the shape of a man, but 
which all who know him call a wreck. 

It is a boy's business to see to it that he 
will never end on the scrap-heap. Can he 
succeed? It is the only business he can be 
sure of succeeding in, the only one worth 
while. Every other thing in life is uncer- 
tain, and, in the end, futile. This one thing 
is sure, if he cares to make it sure ; and it is 
the one important thing. How shall he go 
about the business of making it sure? 

Well, as we have been talking about rail- 
roads, let us take a hint from them. How 
do they keep their lines clear and their trains 
running? By knowing every foot of those 



Get Along With Yourself 93 

lines all the time, and by keeping a sharp eye 
on the turn of every wheel. Not an engine 
starts but they know just where it is going 
and what it is supposed to do. They under- 
stand what each engine is able for, how 
heavy a haul it can take, how far to dispatch 
it, where to sidetrack it, where to send it help 
for steep grades or extra cars. All tracks 
are constantly supervised, signals tested, ma- 
chinery overhauled. In short, the road is 
nothing but a complicated tool, driven by a 
master-hand, who is its master and drives it 
through cleanly because he has studied it 
carefully, examines it constantly, knows it 
from edge to handle and has it responding 
to his lightest touch. 

We are handling bigger, more compli- 
cated engines than any railroad ever 
dreamed of — swifter, harder to watch, al- 
ways apt to open up for themselves tracks 
we never suspected, and that without a mo- 
ment's notice. There is only one way for 
us to run these engines, these senses of ours 
with their myriad, changing instincts dart- 
ing to right and left, these faculties of mind 
and imagination that would shoot past everj^ 



94 Get Along With Yourself 

signal. We must know these engines, study 
them, examine them steadily, understand 
what they can do, and what they ought to do. 
And not a mere theoretical study, either, 
is this to be. Not a recipe for them gotten 
out of a book. No ; we must study them as 
they are in our own selves, vital, palpitating. 
Each boy differs from every other. Each 
system of trackage and engine power is dif- 
ferent. And every boy must study his own 
lines for himself. He must know where he 
is weak, and where he is strong; watch the 
weak spot coolly and without discourage- 
ment, and keep an eye on the strong spot, 
not allowing it to make him overconfident. 
Never lie down in front of a steep hill and 
moan, "I can't climb it." Begin at least to 
peck at it, and you will find yourself cutting 
steps into it that lead to the top. On the 
other hand, don't be recklessly sure of your- 
self and say: "I can do this; here goes." 
No; look ahead. See where you are going 
to light, and estimate the effort necessary to 
carry you across. The champion long 
jumper doesn't use his winning jump four 
feet from the edge of a precipice. 



Get Along With Yourself 95 

All this is easy to say, but not so easy to 
do. It calls for steady, intense, often dis- 
agreeable work. It means that as general 
manager of the system we have to be "on the 
job" every minute. We must know every 
tool we work with, follow every engine along 
its track, pick up every wire that comes in at 
central ; note where business is slow, and hus- 
tle it up ; where it is congesting and clear it 
away. And in this system we call ''our- 
selves" things happen so fast that trouble 
can come up in a flash. Eyes and hands and 
tongue and thought and imagination and de- 
sires are feeding their products over the sys- 
tem with such constant and lightning speed 
that, fall asleep for only a second, and — 
crash! — the system is shot to pieces, with 
wreckage thickening the air. 

But keep alive, alert, smiling all the time. 
If we can do that, with the will back of every 
lever, ready for a grip on each as the need is, 
directing every faculty, taming every un- 
worthy impulse, controlling every thought, 
we achieve — what? That wonderful result 
called "balance." We operate smoothly all 
along the line. Our conscience isn't kicking 



96 Get Along With Yourself 

back at us; our friends are helped, not hin- 
dered by us ; our hearts know what true sun- 
shine is. We are getting along with our- 
selves, because we have examined ourselves, 
because we know ourselves, and we feel, with 
a great joy, that God is near us and is 
pleased with us. 



p 



A BOY WITH THE TUNCH" 



' 'T don't feel like praying to Saint Aloy- 

JL sius the way they say we ought to," 
Joe said to me one day in the midst of a con- 
versation. 

"Why not, Joe?" I asked. 

"Say, he was just naturally good," an- 
swered Joe, "one of those boy wonders who 
grow up all right without any trouble in 
keeping straight. I read about him the 
other day that he never had any temptations 
against his purity. Well, in that case how 
can he understand me or any boy who has to 
fight to stay right? And then I read that 
he would not look at the face of his mother. 
I can't reach that at all. Yes, I pray to him 
for help, but, all the same, those things make 
me feel that he doesn't sympathize with me, 
because he can't understand the ordinary 
boy like me." 

Joe's idea was unusually well put, I 
thought ; and as he had come at me suddenly 

97 



98 A Boy With the Punch 

with the difficulty I did not feel that a rapid- 
fire answer to that sort of question would 
either cover the matter or satisfy Joe. 

''Your objection is a good one, Joe," I 
answered. ''It is evident that the life of 
Saint Aloysius you have been reading has 
raised a difficulty for you and has not an- 
swered it. Let me think over your remarks 
for a while, and we'll talk it over again when 
you are ready." 

I am going to put down here, as nearly as 
I can come to it, the line of thought I offered 
to Joe a little while after. It may be of use, 
I hope, to other boys who may have thought 
as Joe did, even if they do not say their 
thought out loud. 

Joe's idea of Saint Aloysius and, to some 
extent, of saints in general was that they are 
people who five off the earth and up in a 
cloud. A saint, in Joe's mind and in the 
mind of many boys, is a being born with a 
halo, who lives in a kind of trance; a sweet 
and somewhat simpering day-dreamer, who 
spends his time holding his head on one side 
and looking pathetically, if not patroniz- 
ingly, at the "real rough" persons he is com- 



A Boy With the Punch 99 

pelled to live with and to endure* He is 
moreover a perfectly unpractical ornament, 
with no battles to fight, no uneasiness about 
anything, no temptations to resist, or, if he 
has any, just saying "boo!" to them and 
presto — temptations are glad to get away 
from him. 

''He couldn't be bad if he tried," were 
Joe's wordSc And if we spread out the idea 
Joe had back of those words, we will find 
that he really suspected, but didn't like to 
say it, that Aloysius was a kind of milk-and- 
water lad, with no nerve, no speed — spine- 
less. In a boy's single expressive word, he 
didn't have the ''punch." 

Now that is a thing we do not like to have 
said of any of our friends, let alone of a 
saint, and especially a saint who has been se- 
lected as the patron of boys. If there is one 
thing we expect in a boy saint it is that he 
has the "punch." 

Did Aloysius have it? 

Let us consider the facts in the case. 
First of all, let us understand exactly what 
it is we mean by "punch." We take the 
word from the boxing-ring, and we imply 



100 A Boy With the Punch 

that a man who has the "punch" is not 
merely a mule kicking out at random with 
both feet, but a cool person, who can avoid 
unnecessary punishment with skill, who has 
an enduring heart, a quick eye, a swift judg- 
ment to see an opening, and a glove like a 
flash of lightning to go through that opening 
and land with every ounce of energy' in him. 
This looks easy, but any of you boys who 
have ever tried it know that it is extremely 
difficult. So many things seem to get in the 
way, principally the other fellow's glove, 
with, we always think, a horse-shoe in it. 

In fact, it is difficult to have the ''punch" 
in anything. Take the critical moment in a 
baseball game. The bases filled — two out 
— a run needed to tie — two to win. You 
are at the bat, your crowd yelling madly for 
you to "hit it out," the enemy crowd telling 
the pitcher how easy you are, and to strike 
you out. He gives you the "once-over" and 
sneers contemptuously, with a look at his 
team which says, "I don't need you, boys. 
This is the mark I was looking for." The 
fielders tell you you'll be lucky if you see the 
ball. The catcher sarcasticallv tells vou to 



A Boy With the Punch 101 

keep cool. ''Don't worry, son; it's coming 
right over. There it is ! Hit itT And the 
ball zips in like a rifle bullet, and you've got 
to judge in the wink of an eye whether the 
ball is over or just outside, slow or fast, 
straight or a ''spitter." Eight thousand 
possibilities in the air all around you, and 
you've simply got to pick the right one out 
of them all with that little bit of a bat, or else 
hear muffled groans from those who were 
once your friends, and demoniac shrieks of 
joy from those who never did love you. 
Yes, it's the place for the ''punch" to show; 
and, again, it's the cool boy with the quick 
eye and the deadly flash of the bat who is 
going to show it. 

A critical situation, crowded with difficul- 
ties, with hostile surroundings, and the man 
driving through every obstacle like a sword 
blade — this is the true meaning of nerve, 
"punch," genuine courage. 

And the difficulty is not always ended in 
a few moments, as in boxing or in baseball. 
Perhaps you remember reading the story of 
the little Dutch boy passing late at night 
along an unfrequented section of the dykes 



102 A Boy With the Punch 

in Holland. He heard a sound as of water 
gurgling, and thought it might be a leak in 
the dyke, one of the big dangers in that 
country. He searched in the dark until he 
found the spot. It was a leak, threatening 
every moment to grow into a volume of del- 
uging water. He had no time to run for 
help. He called, but no one answered. 
Then he thrust his arm into the opening and 
held it there, hour after hour through the 
long night, shouting as long as he was able, 
but never taking that arm from the hole in 
the dyke. Stiffened and benumbed with 
wet and cold and the agony of holding him- 
self in that position so long, he was finally 
rescued only when dawn came, half dead, but 
plucky to the last and the saviour of the 
whole country around. True nerve in that 
boy! He had staying power, even a better 
thing than the nerve that is needed only for 
the moment. 

Xow let us ask the question. Did Alo- 
ysius in his lifetime show nerve that could 
compare with what I have been outlining? 
Yes, he did, and nerve of a far higher class. 
We must remember, my dear boys, that 



A Boy With the Punch 103 

pluck and courage are not confined to games 
like boxing or baseball. We know it applies 
all through. In work as well as in play, in 
our homes and out of them, in business, in 
war, without pluck we shall never get any- 
where. Because pluck, or what boys call 
the ''punch," means that a man knows what 
he is after and keeps after it until he has it, 
no matter how many disagreeable things he 
has to do or how long they continue. And 
the bigger the business he handles, the more 
terrible the war he is engaged in, the higher 
the quality of pluck he must show if he wants 
to get through without defeat. 

Aloysius was engaged in the biggest busi- 
ness in the world, the business of saving his 
soul. He was fighting in the most deadly 
war in the world, the war against his soul, 
which only the devil knows so well how to 
wage. Aloysius started out to make his 
business a success, to win that war at any 
cost. He knew it was life or death for him, 
and he went into the battle with that under- 
standing. He won, but he used up every 
ounce of his nerve in doing it, and he died 
fighting. It was the only way he could see 



104 A Boy With the Punch 

it ought to be done, and he did it thoroughly. 

What did he do? Take only a few of the 
things. In the first place he made up his 
mind that he could not save himself without 
prayer. He started in to learn how to pray. 
On his knees and without support and often 
away into the night, and whenever he had 
the time, he persevered until he became a 
master at it. He recited the Office of the 
Blessed Virgin and the Psalms, kneeling, 
and meditated strictly in that attitude for 
long hours. 

''But I could never do that," you say. 
"That's too much for anv bov." 

That isn't the point. We started out to 
find whether or not Aloysius had pluck. 
You said something about a milk-and-water 
person. Is that milk-and-water stuff? 
You say it's too much for you. I am not 
saying that you ought to do it. But don't 
forget that Aloysius did it. His mind was 
made up to pray or die. And the real ques- 
tion at issue is: Does this show "punch" 
and staying power or doesn't it? 

Then you say he had no temptations. 
Xo? Then what about his severe fasts, as 



A Boy With the Punch 105 

severe as his superiors would allow him? 
What about his long watchings before the 
crucifix? You see him pictured with a 
wicked-looking scourge lying before him. 
What was this for? It showed that he knew 
so well what purity meant that he made up 
his mind to deal such blows to temptations 
that they were licked before they ever got a 
start. 

"Oh, but I couldn't do things like that. I 
couldn't starve; and I couldn't beat myself 
with a scourge." 

We are not talking about what you could 
do. We are trying to find out whether 
Aloysius had nerve or not. Nothing very 
spineless about that bloody whipping — is 
there? 

He wished to become a member of the So- 
ciety of Jesus. He saw that God wished 
him to be there. Everybody around him 
opposed it. They had good reasons, as they 
saw reasons. His father was dead against 
it. He used all his own power to try to 
break his son of the idea. He was, more- 
over, a man of influence, and he got eminent 
men to help him dissuade Aloj^sius. Bish- 



106 A Boy With the Punch 

ops called the son and spoke to him. A car- 
dinal visited hini and re-inforced his father's 
arguments. They simply didn't believe 
that he really meant to give up all the honor 
and position that awaited him at manhood. 
It was a strong attack. But who won? 
Aloysius won. Rather plucky, don't you 
think? He left home. He became a Jes- 
uit. He did all his work perfectly. He 
went out on the streets and begged food ; he 
worked in hospitals; taught the children of 
the poor; and he finally died from an illness 
he had contracted through nursing the sick. 

''Gee, that's disagreeable work, and dan- 
gerous, too. I wouldn't hke that," you tell 
me. Perhaps not. However, that's neither 
here nor there. What we are after is: does 
work like that and a death like that show that 
Aloysius was a mere pious-looking statue, or 
does it show that he was a boy with a drive 
to him that nothing could stop ? Did he 
have genuine pluck, or didn't he? 

Yes, we shall have to say, this boy cer- 
tainly knew^ what he was about, what he 
wanted ; and he had the nerve to go against 
anything or anybody who tried to stop him 



A Boy With the Punch 107 

from achieving what he saw to be his duty. 
He certainly had the ''punch." 

And there* was one virtue above all others 
he valued, and fought to attain. That was 
thei virtue of purity. How do we know this? 
By the trouble he took to gain it. He was 
what we may call a youthful expert in pur- 
ity. And the Church so much appreciated 
his worth that she has made him the patron, 
the master, to teach purity to the young. 
And if we consider it a moment we shall 'see 
why she did so. 

How do we tell experts in any line? By 
the trouble they take in attending to, and in 
mastering, the finest details •of their work. 
The artist — painter, musician, or poet — is 
deemed great not only in proportion to the 
inspiration he possesses, but especially by the 
power he manifests in revealing that inspira- 
tion down to the finest detail. The baseball 
player is called "great" only when he shows 
that he is a master of "inside" play. The 
business .man is an expert when he judges 
every customer, watches every expense, 
"takes care of the pennies." 

These are the men we go to when we wish 



108 A Boy With the Punch 

to learn how to do their kind of work. We 
don't go to people who are careless of de- 
tails, who don't know that "inside" of the 
game, who pass by the little things, neglect 
the fine points. Because we know that when 
the pinch comes we may be one of the "little 
things" they will pass by. When we wish 
to study the violin, we do not choose as a 
teacher a man whose* every fourth note is a 
scrape. And when we wish to learn how to 
pitch, we do not take lessons from a pitcher 
who throws every other ball out of the lot. 
We don't walk up to a shortstop who has 
just made eight errors *in a game and ask him 
to please tell us how to cover the ground 
around second. 

The man who knows most about a profes- 
sion, a game, a business, is the man we ask 
for help and information. The man who 
thinks so highly of his work, who knows the 
ins and outs of it so well that nothing escapes 
him — that is the man we want to tell us 
things. Do we go to a dunce, a sluggard, 
to find out how to learn, how to study? 

'I can't translate this Latin passage," 



«n 



A Boy With the Punch 109 

says Jack, in distress. ''Where can 1 get a 
lift?" 

"Go over there and ask Matty Marble- 
top," you answer. "He failed in the last 
three exams." Jack is insulted, of course. 

So of higher things. If we wish to learn 
repentance, we pray to those great saints 
who have known what true repentance was 
—to Magdalen, to Augustine. And if we 
wish to avoid impurity, to be clean of body 
and mind, we get close to those who knew it 
so well that they can tell us how to stay pure, 
can give us a helping hand over every inch of 
the battlefield — ^to the Blessed Virgin, above 
all creatures, but also to him whom the 
Church has chosen as the patron of youth's 
purity, to Saint Aloysius. 



BREAK IN SOMEWHERE 

IN one of our recent talks together, my 
dear bovs, you remember that I was tell- 
ing you about my young friend Joe and his 
ideas of Saint Aloysius. Joe half thought, 
but didn't like to say it, that Aloysius was 
an "impossible," a made-to-order boy, and 
— we might as well say it at once — a molly- 
coddle. I think I showed Joe conclusively 
that Aloysius was anything but a molly-cod- 
dle. In fact, before I was through, Joe was 
over at the other extreme and was saying that 
Aloysius was altogether too "fierce" for him. 
Joe was much nearer right in his last opin- 
ion than in his first. If Aloysius was any- 
thing at all, he certainly was not a molly- 
coddle. As Joe expressively put it: "He 
had a terrific punch in either hand, and he 
wasn't afraid to land on himself with it, 
either." And then I noticed that Joe began 
to back away from Saint Aloysius with a 
feeling that he wasn't in that class at all. 

110 



Break in Somewhere 111 

At first Aloysius looked too easy; afterward 
he looked too hard. 

Joe's experience in his first close study 
of a saint isn't exceptional. We all go 
through the same process. All of us are apt 
at the beginning to think that saints are peo- 
ple entirely out of the ordinary; individuals 
put up in glass jars hermetically sealed; all 
destroying germs artificially kept out from 
them; only a cold light allowed to filter in 
upon them, which reveals them in an inde- 
structible and petrifying pose — a sort of 
ecclesiastical "preserves," And then, when 
we begin to find them out as they really were, 
to discover that they were flesh-and-blood 
(and flowing blood) beings, who were 
tempted even more perhaps than we ever 
were and who fought, and suffered, and 
toiled under discouragements, and misunder- 
standings, and disappointments, and who 
never pitied themselves, and who died, 
maybe were killed, fighting — then we fall 
back. ''This is too much!" we say. ''We 
can't stand this. Let's get out of here in a 
hurry. This is no place for us." And we 
begin to look around wildly for the exits. 



112 Break in Somewhere 

But we feel cowardly at doing this, too. 
We know that we are told to imitate the 
saints ; that they are the masters in the work 
of holiness, experts in the science of serving 
God, and that they are put before us with 
the precise idea of telling us by their exam- 
ple what to do and how to do it. 

On the other hand we seem to have reason 
on our side. We see Saint Aloysius, for 
example, scourging himself to blood. 
''Must I do that?" We read that he never 
looked upon the face of his mother. "Must 
I do that?" We learn that he became a Jes- 
uit, begged along the streets, went into hos- 
pitals, got close to all manner of repulsive 
diseases, breathed contagion. ''Must I do 
that?" So of the other saints. Anthony 
flung himself into a thicket of briars; Tele- 
machus leaped into the gladiators' arena and 
was slain; Christopher walked on the water; 
Hyacinth ran through fire ; Pancratius, only 
a little fellow, stepped quietly and stood be- 
fore the lions, who gnawed him to death. 
"Must I be hke that?" we gasp. We turn 
away, discouraged, sick at heart. We sim- 
ply cannot do it. 



Break in Somewhere 113 

We are between the horns of a dilemma. 
We look at things that make us wish to run 
away, and as we turn to flee we are met by 
the stern command to go back and not only 
look but do likewise. We cannot stay, and 
yet we must stay. Something is wrong 
somewhere. 

Yes, something is wrong. Our idea of 
imitating a saint is wrong. Our notion of 
following in the footsteps of the saints is 
based on a mistake. The question we ask 
ourselves, ''Must I do that?" shows this 
plainly. If we must do everything the 
saints do, or that any saint does, then we 
must follow out the imitation in everything. 
Accordingly we should have to say: "Saint 
Aloysius lived in Italy ; therefore I must live 
in Italy. He was a prince and he spoke 
Latin fluently ; therefore I must be a prince 
and must speak Latin fluently." In the 
same way, looking at Saint Christopher, we 
conclude, "I must be a man of tremendous 
muscle." And a moment after, considering 
Pancratius, we decide that we ought to be 
anything but gigantic. Saint Simeon Sty- 
htes lived on a pillar. Saint Alexis lived 



114 Break in Somewhere 

under the stairs. And if I follow out my 
theory of imitating the saints I shall have to 
do both these things at the same time. It is 
a labyrinth I shall never get out of. 

But we should never have got into it. 
Our idea has been wrong from the start. 
The truth is that it is not the precise indi- 
vidual thing a saint does which we imitate. 
Rather it is his way of doing things that we 
strive to follow — ^his spirit, his determina- 
tion, his perseverance, his fruitful use of the 
material he finds at hand to work with. A 
man building a house, for example, inspects 
other houses. He goes over a great number 
of them until he picks upon one which comes 
close to what he would like. He has gath- 
ered points from all the others, and even the 
one he chooses he cannot imitate perfectly. 
Why not? Well, the location is different 
from what his can be. Windows, doors, 
must be placed in another order, rooms laid 
out otherwise. The grounds about the 
house, the light exposure, the approach — a 
thousand details, in short, must of necessity 
be other than in the model. He has more 
chances for certain effects in one place, not 



Break in Somewhere 115 

so many in another. He learns from the 
model house, but does the best he can with 
his own under the circumstances. 

In something, however, he can duplicate 
— namely, in the material for building. The 
quality of stone, the grade of sand, of glass, 
of wood, of ground for the foundation, of 
workmen to put up the house. These are 
essentials — the stuflF that goes to make up a 
house. The other things are accidentals. 
He may use them or not. 

So it is with our imitation of the saints. 
It isn't the external things we do that count 
in imitating the life of a saint. Circum- 
stances differ in every life, and we cannot 
control circumstances. What really counts 
is the spirit we act with. That is the build- 
ing material of a soul. Not the mere ex- 
ternal movements of hands and feet consti- 
tute imitation. It isn't a question of atti- 
tudes. But the putting our soul in the 
proper condition to follow God and to do 
our full duty — that is the stuff of life, the un- 
derlying essential of all work. To follow, 
not what a saint did, but to grasp why he did 
it, to approach and to feci the motive that 



116 Break in Somewhere 

lay at the back of his work, to come near the 
fire of his courage, his supreme fearlessness, 
and to warm ourselves at that fire of the love 
of God there, and then to turn back to our 
own work, different work altogether on the 
exterior, and to put into it something of that 
same spirit and that divine fire — this is to im- 
itate any saint. 

You may not be able to face your house 
in the same direction he did, nor build it as 
high or as extensive, nor with the same archi- 
tecture, but one thing you can do. You can 
have your house as substantial, as solid, as 
useful in its way, if you get the materials into 
it. And that is all we are asked to do in imi- 
tating any saint. Get the materials for a 
saint's life into your own. What are they? 
A clean conscience, a strong grip on the idea 
of duty, a courage that doesn't shake like a 
leaf under the first little trial, and a constant 
realization that God is near us and helping 
us if we will only let Him. 

If you get this much from a saint's exam- 
ple, that's enough. Don't worry about any- 
thing else he did. Each saint had his own 
way of doing things, and each had different 



Break in Somewhere 117 

things to do, just as you have things to do 
that nobody else ever had or will have. 
Saints had their peculiarities, too. So have 
you. Peculiarities aren't sins, but you don't 
have to imitate them. Besides, what would 
be perfectly natural for one person often 
would be a freak in another. As I said, 
these things depend on circumstances, and 
are accidentals. You don't have to watch 
them. But you must get at the spirit under 
them if you would imitate the saint who did 
them. And under every surface of a saint's 
life you will discover, back of all variations, 
the one great thing we mentioned in another 
talk — fearlessness, drive, or, as boys prefer 
to put it, "punch." Get that, and get it in 
the right direction, and you are imitating the 
saints excellently. 

And so, to the question: "Saint Aloysius 
never looked at his mother — must I do 
that?" I reply: perhaps you ought to do this 
very thing. It is within the range of possi- 
bilities. But if you don't see that you ought 
to do it, at least learn the motive the saint 
had back of his action — to deny yourself 
strongly, sometimes cutting away even from 



118 Break in Somewhere 

what is legitimate, to be the better prepared 
against whatever might sully the purity of 
your soul. 

''Saint Aloysius scourged himself — ^must 
I?" Again, perhaps. But if you don't see 
that you should, at least you can have the 
courage to do things that you sometimes 
don't like to do, especially when they are 
plain duties, such as studying, obeying par- 
ents, pushing clear of unclean companions. 

"Saint Aloysius became a religious, and 
wished to be a priest — must I?" Perhaps 
you ought. But if not, at least learn to 
keep close to God and in your sphere of life 
to do all you can to help those near you, ac- 
cording to your opportunities. You see, it 
is courage, strength, divine perseverance we 
learn from the saints. And if we are in 
deadly earnest we shall enlist with them and 
worthily help to fight with them. We may 
not be able to do a single external thing they 
did. But we'll get into the battle some- 
where. We'll do something with the same 
spirit they showed. If we cannot get into 
the aero service, we'll try the navy. If we 
can't make the navy we'll try the army, cav- 



% 



Break in Somewhere 119 

airy, artillery — go along the line, until we 
break in somewhere, if it's only at scrubbing 
floors. And then we'll scrub for all we're 
worth. 

For it is not the thing we do, but the spirit 
we do it with that counts in making saints 
for God. 



A FRIEXD OF BOYS 

Oy the last day of Jiily we celebrate the 
feast-day of a saint who has had per- 
haps the greatest ultimate influence any one 
man has had upon the lives of boys during 
the past four hundred years. The name of 
the saint is Ignatius, and the ideas he had 
about the education of boys, and which he 
put into practical operation himself, have 
been adopted largely by the whole ci^nlized 
world, and have molded the training and the 
teaching of boys for the last four centuries. 

It is of interest to any boy to know what 
kind of man this was. More than any man 
we know of in that time he has been the 
friend of boys. ^Miat was the secret of his 
lasting power? To what particular gift 
does he owe liis ascendancy f AMiat could 
he do \ ^Miat was his forte ? What was he 
famous for \ 

We may best answer this question by find- 
ing out what he was not famous for. First 
of all. he was not a celebrated theologian. 



A Friend of Boys 121 

If we look over the list of the great divines 
we shall not find his name. 

Was he, then, a deep philosopher, a pro- 
found searcher into the nature and the work- 
ings of the mind, a pioneer in the fields of 
thought? We cannot say that he was. He 
founded no new philosophical school, nor 
pretended to be a discoverer in the domain 
of purely human wisdom. 

Was he, perhaps, an orator swaying mul- 
titudes, or a litterateur with that gift of crea- 
tion and expression which moves the world 
to admiration? No; as far as we are aware 
he did comparatively little public speaking. 
And as for languages and literary skill, we 
have the story how once, when he essayed to 
preach in Italian, which was a language he 
had been studying, he appointed one of his 
young followers to note his mistakes and 
tell him of them afterwards, and how the 
youth counted mistakes until he was tired, 
and, coming to Ignatius, had to tell him that 
he could not follow the command, because he 
could not keep up with the number of mis- 
takes Ignatius had made. 

Was he, then, a scientist or an explorer. 



122 A Friend of Boys 

dazzling the world with the results of his re- 
search or the splendor of his daring? Again 
we shall have to answer in the negative. 
The records show nothing of this. 

Then, you will say, he must at least have 
had money and social standing to accom- 
plish results. Yes, he had money, but he 
gave it all away. And he had social stand- 
ing, but deliberately forswore it right at the 
start of his work. He could fight too; in 
fact, he was what we would call a terrific 
fighter, and he loved the sound of battle. 
But even that he cast aside as soon as he saw 
it was not the way to win what he had set 
himself to win. 

And yet, undistinguished as he was in all 
these things and, in some of them, entirely 
without knowledge or experience, it was men 
from precisely these classes whom he drew 
under his influence and over whom he 
wielded a wonderful power. From every 
side came to him theologians and philoso- 
phers, writers and speakers, explorers, sci- 
entists, social lions. And they surrendered 
to him and asked him to put them at any 
work he pleased; and they gave up money 



A Friend of Boys 123 

and fame and society and their own freedom 
to him, went just where he told them to go, 
did just what he said they should do, and 
kept doing it until he told them to stop, or 
until death took them out of the world. 

Surely, there was some unique and aston- 
ishing power hidden in this man somewhere. 
There was. Few men have ever appeared 
in the world who have carried such sustained 
and ujiiversal power over such a variety of 
characters. Books upon books have been 
written by both his friends and his enemies 
to describe his power and to explain it. To 
his enemies he is, of course, a mystery, but 
a perpetual astonishment; to his freinds, al- 
ways more wonderful the closer they come 
to him. One fact, however, is certain to 
both — he possessed a power that included all 
these others and, somehow, dominated them. 

What is the secret of his power? When 
all is said, the true secret of his power is that 
he knew the human heart. No individual 
ever moved into the charmed circle of his in- 
fluence but Ignatius could handle him. He 
softened the difficult character and strength- 
ened the yielding; encouraged the timid and 



124 A Friend of Boys 

checked the overbold; he judged perfectly 
when to attack, when to defend ; when to ac- 
cept an offer of service, when to reject it; 
when and how to be kind and, as well, severe. 

He read character perfectly. This may 
seem rather trite praise of a leader of men. 
All leaders, it will be said, need this quality 
as a fundamental, and no leader ever lived, 
whether in war or commerce or politics, but 
possessed the gift of swaying his followers, 
and this gift is inevitably based on accurate 
judgment of character. Why single out 
Ignatius for a quality really common to all 
of his class? 

We must, of course, concede that all lead- 
ers are, after a fashion, astute judges of 
character. The great general, the captain 
of finance, the ruler of a state, even the pio- 
neer in art, must make his appeal to his own 
world and must base that appeal on his 
knowledge of the heart. But, in the first 
place, leaders such as these are calling ulti- 
matety to the masses, or at least to that sec- 
tion of the masses they are aiming to influ- 
ence. They draw individuals about them, 
it is true, but only as lieutenants to assist 




A Friend of Boys 125 

them in making their mass appeal. They 
hope to get one idea into a large number of 
men, and, on the flowering of this idea, to get 
these men to move with them. 

Now this idea will appeal to only one cor- 
ner of the heart. Napoleon, for example, 
struck the note of national glory, and swept 
his warriors after him to the bugle's thrill; 
Cecil Rhodes pictures to his followers the 
splendors of wealth and added territory; 
Bismarck, the iron force of an irresistible 
people, imposing its will upon an unfailing 
world. Taking these ideas, good or bad as 
they happen to be, we shall see in any case 
that they do not touch the whole human 
heart, and, what is of more import, do not 
anywhere drive to the center of the heart. 
So that if any one of these ideas is taken as 
the leading idea in a life, that life is sure to 
end in a mistake. It isn't deep enough nor 
broad enough. Worldly leaders, therefore, 
are largely unconcerned about the individ- 
ual's character. They study character in 
the masses, but only to discover its vulner- 
able spot, and by cleverly plajnng upon this 
they lead the multitudes in their wake. 



126 A Friend of Boys 

Their aim is not to lead the individual to 
freedom by developing his strength, but to 
enslave the masses by emphasizing their 
weakness. 

Like these men, Ignatius had one idea, but 
an idea infinitely more profound than theirs, 
more valuable to humanity, and yet, such is 
the perversity of human nature, infinitely 
more difficult to realize. It was, in fact, the 
complete contrary to all. He stated it 
clearly when he said to Francis Xavier, 
"What shall it profit a man to gain the whole 
world and lose his own soul?" Let the 
world go, he says, but save your soul. 

This is a hard saying. It is compara- 
tively an easy thing to lead men where they 
like to go; easy to call to the crowd, "Follow 
me, and you shall do as you please !" But to 
walk up to one man after another, and after 
picking out the particular craving he has 
made the central idea of his life, to hit that 
exact spot, and to say to each in turn, "For- 
get your reputation," or, "Forget your 
money-hunting," or, "Forget your notion of 
power and fame and pleasure"- — this is a 
test of influence that would make the hardi- 



A Friend of Boys 127 

est adventurer turn back as from either a 
foolish venture or a dangerous one. For a 
man who has started down any of these paths 
it is taking the mainspring out of his soul 
and letting all the wheels of hfe run down. 
Yet this is what Ignatius proposed to him- 
self. 

More than this. After taking out the de- 
fective mainspring, he inserted another 
which made the wheels go again, but in ex- 
actly the opposite direction — another main- 
spring which at the start hurt terribly. 
"Get low; be hidden; don't advertise your- 
self; seek self -obliteration ; cut mere pleas- 
ure absolutely; serve others without pay; 
spend yourself." This is what Ignatius 
planned to do, and this is what he actually 
did to man after man — not weaklings either, 
but men who could get the tightest possible 
grip on the wrong mainspring, and from 
whom only a miracle could wrench it loose. 
Ignatius wrought the miracle — a marvel of 
spiritual surgery, like taking the diseased 
heart out of a living man and replacing it 
with a sound one. 

Observe, too, that Ignatius made his spe- 



128 A Friend of Boys 

cine appeal to the individual. His principal 
hope of success did not depend on spectacu- 
lar plays to the masses. He wanted every 
soul, indeed, and hoped to win it. But he 
knew that in his campaign souls could not be 
rounded up and driven like cattle. Each 
soul, he knew, was different from ever\" 
other, in circumstances, in strength, in de- 
gree and kind of difficulty it must face. To 
each, therefore, must be made a distinct and 
individual appeal. Each man must think 
for himself, pray for himself, act for him- 
self, save his ovm soul. 

And the first ones he thought of in this 
campaign were the boys. Their souls he 
wanted to gain for God before he gained 
anything else. He loved all souls, indeed, 
and wished to gain them, young or old. But 
he had a speical love for the young. He 
wasn't satisfied with picking a soul out of 
the burning after it had been forty years in 
sin. He wished to keep it out of sin from 
the start, to have it pure and strong and 
therefore happy from its earliest days. 
From the rising of the sun of life until its 




A Friend of Boys 129 

going down he desired the clean oblation of 
the soul to God. 

That is why he started all those schools 
and colleges for boys all over the world. 
He wished boys to have strong, intelligent 
souls— boys who could master difficulties 
and master themselves and who could go out 
among their fellow-men afterward and show 
others how to do the same thing. The men, 
famous for achievement in every intellectual 
line, who were trained as boys under the sys- 
tem of Ignatius make an astonishingly long 
list. But equally long, perhaps longer, is 
the hst of those whose lives showed moral 
power of the first magnitude. They were 
all boys trained by Ignatius. 

He had sat on the benches with little 
youngsters when he was himself a man well 
over thirty, studying his first Latin. And 
we can be sure he watched them well, and 
learned there, besides his Latin, the inner 
heart of boys. 

These are the reasons why all boys should 
have a little place in their hearts for Igna- 
tius. He loved them truly, not with a 



130 A Friend of Boys 

gushy sentiment nor oily and high-browed 
theory; not patronizingly, nor snobbishly, 
but with an understanding of their earliest 
needs, with a sympathy for their inmost na- 
ture, an appreciation of their individual dif- 
ferences and an abihty to adapt himself to 
every single boy. 



PATTING MUD PIES 

SUPPOSE on some day when you happened 
to be in the mood for watching, you 
were to observe a man going down the street 
and stopping to talk to every child he met, 
pausing on the corners and interrupting the 
newsboys for a chat, crossing the street back 
and forth to read the signs on the windows, 
playing with every stray dog that came 
along. We should conclude that he is a 
very simple person. 

Following him farther, we note him in- 
tently studying the pavement and picking 
up things off it, looking along the gutter and 
fishing out novelties from it, hovering near 
fruit-stands and counting the apples one by 
one with his cane. We should say to our- 
selves, "He's queer!" 

Next we see him signaling to street cars as 
they dash by, hailing wagons and motor cars, 
bowing elaborately to strangers. "Ah!" we 
mutter, "this is easy. The man's touched. 
The observation ward is the place for him." 

131 



132 Patting Mud Pies 

He keeps on down street, with a crowd of 
curious small boys after him, passes through 
gangs of roughs who jeer at him and plaster 
him with vile jests, jostle him. He takes it 
all smilingly, and though he can pass off by a 
side street, he refuses to do so. "The man is 
a fool!" is our decision. 

Finally, real danger develops. He is 
handled violently by the gang, shoved right 
and left, pelted with mud, thrown down, bat- 
tered about, dragged along over every kind 
of obstacle. And we conclude that this per- 
son is either completely insane, and must be 
protected, or that he deserves his treatment 
for not respecting himself more. 

Well, would it startle you, my dear boys, 
if I were to suggest that we turn upon our- 
selves at this point and say to ourselves, 
"This means me?" 

Does it not describe at least a part of us, 
and that great part we call our mind? Do 
we not, as a matter of fact, treat our mind 
often so that it resembles the man we have 
pictured above? 

"How so?" you ask. 



Patting Mud Pies 133 

Why, do we not send our mind out into 
any kind of companionship; push it reck- 
lessly down any dangerous street ; allow it to 
pick up any kind of thoughts from the gut- 
ter; deliberately drive it into the most vil- 
lainous companionship? We have enough 
experience of ourselves to realize that our 
mind can get into desperate corners in the 
twinkle of an eye, even when we know the 
danger is there, but become careless and take 
a chance. The hordes of evil pounce upon 
it, and in an instant are dragging it pitilessly 
through the mire. 

Indeed, this way of neglecting our mind 
is so evidently a piece of folly that I shall not 
dwell on it here. There is another way, 
slower, more subtle, deadlier. And that is, 
by submitting our mind to influences which 
in the beginning we assure ourselves can 
never hurt us (no matter what they may 
do to others) and which in the end swallow 
us up as in a quicksand. And one of these 
evil influences is our reading. 

"Gee," I think I hear you say. *'How 
can reading hurt me?" 



134 Patting Mud Pies 

There you are! Off on the wrong foot. 
Just what I said was the first mistake "It 
can't hurt me!" 

Think for a moment. What does a book 
do to us?— any book at all, I mean. It talks 
to us, and it talks to us all the time. It but- 
tonholes us and we haven't a word to say. 
It's a monologue in which we haven't a 
chance for a syllable. We may lay it down; 
but pick it up and it starts off again at the 
same old thing. It gets the jump on us 
every time. Among people we meet, per- 
haps the hardest to endure are those who 
must do all the talking. When we see them 
coming we are very much impelled to run 
from them. And if we happen to be caught, 
we find ourselves constantly thinking of 
ways and means of escape. It is the very, 
very exceptional person who can do all the 
talking to us and be tolerable, let alone inter- 
esting. 

And yet, what we would not think of en- 
during from even an author in evening 
clothes we stand from the same author dis- 
guised in a book. 

"Oh," you interrupt, ''that's because he is 



Patting Mud Pies 135 

saying something worth while in the book — 
something one can afford to take time hs- 
tening to." 

And that, son, is a very sensible answer; 
indeed, the only answer to the question: why 
is a book? 

Then ask yourself, using your own stand- 
ard — how many books have I read that said 
something really worth while? In other 
words, what kind of books do you allow to 
talk to you? What book are you reading 
right now? 

Let us look over a few of the genuine 
"hold-ups" and see if we are picking our 
reading from among them. 

The Ruddy-faced Robert, or The Won- 
derful Waif series — Robert, the everlasting 
hero of the series is, as the secondary title as- 
sures us, a real wonder. Of an open counte- 
nance, flecked by a few freckles, indicating 
that he can't have a particle of the sneak in 
him; frank, honest eyes, looking straight 
out; rich brown hair carelessly tossing with 
a curly wave over a brow that a sculptor 
would love to chisel. His clothes, it is true, 
are not much of a fit. In fact, thev make 



136 Patting Mud Pies 

him seem to be walking sideways. But what 
of that? What are clothes to character? 
Down with the boy who would snub our 
Robert for his clothes! (Deep stuff, at 
which we mentally yell, "Hear, Hear!") 

And where did Robert come from? Out 
of a coal-bin, for all we can tell. He is with 
us, that's all we are sure of. No education, 
no training, no religion, with the benefit of 
bad company all his life, he is nevertheless a 
little peach without an unsound spot in him. 
That's the way boys grow, you know. And, 
in spite of all his handicaps, we are certain 
right from page one that Robert is going to 
baffle the huge villain who is persecuting the 
lone widow whose house is mortgaged; he is 
going to break up the intended robbery of 
the great bank of Comstock & Go. by creep- 
ing up behind the safe-blowers just as they 
are about to insert the dynamite, snatching 
it from the hands of the man in the black 
mask and throwing it out the window, where 
the only thing it does is to light on the head 
of the lookout and, strange to say, injures 
him seriously. After this, Robert goes right 
back to his work as a newsy just as if noth- 



Patting Mud Pies 137 

ing had happened, and the very next day we 
know he will save the life of the firm's head, 
Comstock Senior, himself, by holding back a 
large automobile with one hand while he 
picks up the old gentleman with the other. 
After this, of course, he gets the stock out 
of Comstock, and marries the old man's 
daughter, whom he had previously rescued 
from the eleventh story of a burning build- 
ing, where she had gone to see about the wid- 
ow's mortgage. 

Dear little Robert ! He simply can't help 
doing good. He isn't a boy at all. He's a 
superman, and common clay has no chance 
with him. We've all met this kind of boy 
in real life! And the moral is: don't think 
about work for a minute. Just go out into 
the street and sell papers and you'll be all 
right. 

At least eighty-eight millions of this style 
of book are on the market. Is this your 
steady reading? 

Should a boy outgrow this first class of 
books, then he meets — the Detective Story! 
This is a higher type of book, of course. 
The first we have discovered to have had too 



138 Patting Mud Pies 

much sentimentality in it — mushy stuff, try- 
ing to touch our heart. Huh, we have no 
heart! Give us the intellectual book, per- 
vaded by keen thought. 

Persons of the Book. — The Detective: 
penetrating, blue-gray eyes; has to have 
these for the steely glitter constantly needed 
in his business; clean shaven; thin, penetrat- 
ing features — grip of iron — muscles like 
whip -cords — shoots through either coat 
pocket ; talks in monosyllables, each worth a 
gold mine. Cool? Seventy-six below zero, 
with the whole town around him boiling over 
with terrific excitement. Story opens with 
a corpse discovered, and not a clew to the 
murder but a solitary hatpin piercing the 
temple of the victim. Xo, she couldn't have 
put it in there by mistake, for her own hat- 
pin is still in the hat on her head. Burlap 
Domes, the detective, utters the single syl- 
lable, ''Hmm!" 

The Heroine: golden hair and far-away 
blue eyes. She looks very lovely in mourn- 
ing, as she taps her tiny foot nervously on 
the velvet carpet and asks the searching, 
final question, ''Who can have done the das- 



Patting Mud Pies 139 

tardly deed?" Burlap, we feel sure, knows 
at this very moment, but he won't tell. He 
is weaving his terrible web slowly but surely 
around the criminals. The heroine's chief 
asset is the piercing scream, which can be 
heard for miles, and which helps Burlap con- 
siderably, as he can locate the trouble 
through it. Said scream is always caused 

by- 

The Villain: a desperate "low-brow," yet 
with a kind of fascination about him, due 
principally to his weird, mocking laugh. 
He is discovered at the last to be in the pay 
of a high society person who wishes to de- 
stroy the lovely heroine and get the title to 
her property. 

The Detective's Assistant: generally a 
youth, ignorant of danger, but sharp as a 
steel trap, and living, apparently, upon ap- 
proving nods from Burlap. He leads a gay 
life, doing the most insane things, seemingly. 
Whistles at a lamp-post; rides with a ped- 
dler; lounges on the ferry; disguises him- 
self as a fortune-teller ; hiding in a cellar, he 
discovers the fatal ink-spot under the carpet, 
and Burlap tells him where to go to get the 



140 Patting Mud Pies 

missing papers. The hatpin still is the big 
clew, however. The faint odor clinging to 
its head is, Bui'lap tells us in the denoue- 
ment, distinctly Arabian. Hence his sud- 
den and fearful struggle with, and final ar- 
rest of, Hasheesh, the sword swallower, the 
last person in the world any one would sus- 
pect of hatpins. 

These stories in every shape, from the pa- 
per novel to the gilt-topped volume at one- 
fifty. What is your average on these? 

Next comes the Character Novel. This 
is a step higher. Here we have not merely 
sentiment alone, or intellect alone, but the 
whole soul combed out before us as with a 
fine comb, and every quiver portrayed. 
One is really educated on getting this far. 
For we are now among the "best sellers." 

The book opens with the inaccessible hero- 
ine, a maid of moods. Slender and willowy; 
radiant, yet spirituelle; melting and, withal, 
remote even to haughtiness ; every change of 
clothing makes her look more beautiful. At 
least the hero tells us so, and heroes ought to 
know. She, Clarice, is very contemptuous 
of the hero, Hemingway, who begins very 



% 



Patting Mud Pies 141 

modestly, but grows on you by the manly 
way in which he persists, despite the biting 
raillery of the heiress. And when Clarice 
at the golf links passes him by with studied 
absentmindedness, holding her shrimp-pink 
sun-shade so as to shut out Hemingway and 
calling with affected lightness to her Pom- 
eranian, we know for certain that he is 
bound to win. 

Later, on the veranda, she laughs at him 
— a peal of sarcastic, almost derisive, yet sil- 
very laughter; which would fade away to a 
low agonized cry for help did she see at the 
moment a dark form lurking behind the rose- 
bushes in the garden, and hear an ominous 
hiss piercing the night. 

Midway in the novel the hero reverses 
fiercely and takes his turn at becoming 
haughty, whereupon the heroine begins to 
melt away, and a suspicious alloy gets into 
the silver of her laugh. This goes on for 
one hundred odd pages, with the villain, who 
possesses a secret about her maternal grand- 
father, coming on stronger and stronger, un- 
til, after about three hundred pages, Clarice 
is reduced at last to the low agonized cry for 



142 Patting Mud Pies 

help. Whereat Hemingway, forgetting all 
his wrongs, with one mighty bound seizes the 
villain (Sir Mortimer Dedwun in disguise) 
by the throat, wrenches the pistol from his 
cowardly hand and hurls him through the 
shrubbery, uttery shattered. Then the 
moon comes up — . Holiday edition, in limp 
leather and a box, for $3.50. And a ''seller" 
in every sense of the word. 

You smile at the above thrillers in capsule 
form? That's because they hit so near the 
truth, my dear boys, don't you think? 

''He knows so much about them, he must 
have read 'em himself!" fiercely mutters 
Davie, the Demon Devourer, looking in my 
direction. 

"Certainly," I answer in the most hard- 
ened manner. What of that? There is a 
time in everybody's life when he delights in 
a rattle, plays at building sandhouses and 
making mud pies. But he grows out of it 
early, and steadily and progressively turns 
his serious attention to more useful things. 
And if he insists on staying in the rattle 
stage he is looked upon as a ninny or an im- 
becile. 



Patting Mud Pies 143 

It is so with our reading. No one objects 
to a boy experiencing the silly period in his 
reading. That's because his mind is then in 
its silly phase. But it must be strictly a 
transition period. He must get through 
with it, come out of it. The pathetic thing, 
and the irritating thing is to see a boy 
stretching up and broadening out into a 
man's full physical stature and strength, and 
at the same time still pottering about men- 
tally in his little sandpiles, patting his mud 
pies, and crowing at his rattle. To see a 
large object weighing approximately one 
hundred and fifty pounds, squaring his 
shoulders in admiration of his physical prow- 
ess and carefully draping his wavy locks over 
his alabaster brow in close attention to his 
physical beauty, and then to see that same 
object deliberately and solemnly reach out, 
seize one of these sawdust books, and pro- 
ceed to feed the inside of his head with its 
fluff and rubbish, posing the while as a genu- 
ine "high-brow" — this, my dear boys, is in- 
deed a sight for the tears of the gods. 

And mere mortals, helplessly looking on, 
can only exclaim, ''Oh, what a mind!" 



BOGUS MONEY 

THE ridiculous quality of the mud-pie 
book becomes evident as soon as we 
strip it of its verbiage. We remove the 
^\Tappings and we find, not a beautiful sta- 
tue, but a wooden post. If we did this 
only once or twice, we could afford to laugh 
at it, and to admit that the joke was on us. 
But when we begin innocently to walk up to 
one post after another and with the solem- 
nity of a floorwalker carefully to disrobe it 
down to the same old splintered core, pen- 
sively sw^allowing each bright rag as we de- 
tach it and wondering bootlessly why that 
padded feeling of excelsior is in our heads, 
we ought to realize something serious is hap- 
pening to us. We are spending our time 
stalking scarecrows and, most humiliating of 
all, we are becoming the publisher's goat. 
We feed indiscriminately on any old thing 
he throw^s out to us. 

We are being steadily gulled, in short, 

144 



Bogus Money 145 

into accepting false for true. Bogus money 
is passed on us, and we take it with the sim- 
plicity of a five-year-old playing at grocery 
store, and taking brown paper for bank 
checks. The idea possesses us that holding 
a thing bound in covers means intellectual 
occupation, and that anything in print is 
worth while. You might as well say that 
anything you see growing out of the ground 
is worth eating, anything you see along the 
street is worth picking up and saving. 

"But it interests me," objects my friend 
Tommy Shocker, with considerable show of 
heat. ''That's the way it always is. As 
soon as a fellow gets to like anything, then 
they're sure to pull some of this mentor stuff 
on him. Every time I get interested in a 
book I'm looking out for one of those 'Ver- 
hoten^ signs stuck in through the door at me. 
This 'don't you dare, you naughty child' 
business is tiresome." 

Not 'arf bad, Tom old chap. I think you 
have a good chance to win the elocution prize 
this year. But be patient for just a few 
minutes and listen to me. 

You say the mud-pie book interests you. 



146 Bogus Money 

Now, Tom, I am going to surprise you by 
entering a flat denial on that proposition and 
asserting that the mud-pie book does not in- 
terest you. How do I prove that? Well, 
follow me along, and you'll see that it isn't 
a deep matter at all to prove it. 

To begin with, you've often heard and you 
know from your own experience, that man is 
a many-sided being. All his various ener- 
gies, however, may be reduced to three main 
heads : the moral life of a man, where his will 
moves ; the intellectual, where the mind oper- 
ates; and the bodily life, the field of the 
senses. These three forces do not act sepa- 
rately, each in a sealed compartment, but in 
every action of a human being they co-op- 
erate for good or evil. Each has its part to 
play in our lives and the boy who balances 
these forces, always keeping each in its 
proper place, is the boy I call a saint. 

A lack of balance in any one of these three 
forces, the moral, the intellectual, the bod- 
ily, inevitably results in some form of evil. 
For example, an undue insistence upon our 
moral side, if continued, has an immoral out- 
come. Such a person is everlastingly look- 



Bogus Money 147 

ing for sin, either in his own life, or in the 
lives of others. We shall find him either in 
utter moral confusion, a prey to scruples, 
nursing an incurably stubborn habit of soul, 
cutting himself off from all direction and not 
infrequently following a life of downright 
sin ; or we shall see him impertinently intrud- 
ing into the lives of others, seeing wrong in 
all they do — a fanatic, a Pharisee, complain- 
ing that Christ heals the sick on the Sabbath 
day. "Hypocrites" was the name Christ 
gave such folk. Too much morahty on one 
point ends in no morality at all. Boys do 
not often suffer from the hypocrite disease. 

Again we can suffer from an excess of in- 
tellectual work. This is common nowadays 
in the business world, in the worry and men- 
tal strain that follow upon the exclusive fo- 
cusing of the mind on a single spot and for- 
getting everything else. This spells nerv- 
ous prostration, insanity, the breaking up of 
a whole life. 

Lastly, too much attention to the senses 
has its fruits in a life which is all amuse- 
ments, frivolous distraction, empty enter- 
tainment leading up to a degraded sensual- 



148 Bogus Money 

ity and a degenerate wreck of mind and 
body. 

It is clear, then, that we must keep these 
three forces in us well-balanced, if we wish 
to prevent failure in life. We must allow 
nothing so to interest us in any one of these 
fields that harm will come to the other two. 
And as soon as any serious lapse occurs in 
our lives we can be sure that one of the three 
forces, moral, intellectual, or bodily, has 
dominated at the expense of the others. 
And that is why we lose our balance, and 
with it our peace and happiness and useful- 
ness in the world. 

Apply this now to the career of a "mud- 
pie" reader. In which of these fields is he 
making his mistake? Xot along the lines of 
too much morahty, certainly. Xobody 
would ever accuse these books of being sur- 
charged with morahty. Xor are we over- 
emphasizing the intellectual. The \er\ 
structure of any one of these books, with 
their thin — too thin — plots and their vacu- 
ous characters, acquit them of the faintest 
suspicion of intelligence. 

He is mistaken on the side of the senses. 



I 



1 



Bogiis Money 149 

And why? Because such books appeal to 
us as animals principally. Only recollect 
what it is you bring away from such a book. 
Nothing of character or of plot. But the 
vanishing shadow in the grove ; the mysteri- 
ous moan in the lonely wing of the castle; 
the bloody finger print; the impassioned 
tones of the hero; the sudden pistol-barrel 
stuck in your face as you turn the corner; 
the clash and ring of the steel in a duel by 
moonlight; the trick of mistaken identity; 
the heroine freezing us with her icy tones; 
the underground passages ; the darkened car- 
riage whirling through the deserted streets; 
the piercing shriek, the sudden stillness; the 
"drip-drip" of the blood falling in heavy 
drops upon the marble pavement — hurry, 
rush, sudden stops; high tension and flabby 
collapse; the short sentence with its gaspy 
punctuation ; one moment we are on the roof 
of a forty-eight story building and the next 
plunged into a hidden grave sixteen feet un- 
der the cellar — all this, or its equivalent in 
various forms is the hash these books serve 
you, and you never know how the next 
mouthful is going to taste. 



150 Bogus Money 

It is like going through one of those crazy 
houses in the amusement parks, where one 
step sends you through the floor, and the 
next sliding down a pair of stairs; you are 
caught in a closing doorway, stumble along 
rocking corridors, slap into a mirror you 
thought was a room ahead. Bucolic bur- 
lesque — perhaps worse. It finally develops 
into a situation similar to the man caught in 
the crowd of roughs and shoved about, 
shaken violently, hit, and when he turns to 
protect himself on one side is battered from 
the other. That's what these books do. 
They hit you so hard and often when your 
mind isn't ready that it can never get set to 
defend itself and is beaten to a pulp. 

How do we emerge from this kind of read- 
ing? Dazed, feverish, glassy-eyed; for any 
serious mental effort, helpless as a jelly fish; 
and with the craving to allay the fever by 
more of the same concoction, like a man 
thirsting to death and drinking salt water. 
It is the racking excitement of the ''shoot- 
the-chutes" or the racing coaster, the over- 
indulgence of one sense to the fatal injury of 
the whole man. Like the cigarette fiend, 



Bogus Money 151 

the drunkard, the impure, who satisfy one 
craving at the cost of soul and body, so the 
boy who constantly reads merely for thrills 
is really indulging sensuality, animal excite- 
ment, passion. And the price he pays will 
ultimately be the same. 

This is putting it rather strong, you will 
think. I do not think so. Passions un- 
checked grow like weeds, and rapidly harden 
into the unbreakable fetters of habit. Can 
this apparently negligible foible of reading 
merely for the thrills develop fatally? It 
certainly can. And how? 

Why after a while, a very little while, the 
mind wearies of this overdone melodrama, 
becomes limp and "dopey" from the nerve 
strain. The cold gun pressed against the 
base of its brain feels like a harmless, neces- 
sary collar button. The screams of Ethel, 
the ethereal, become as unimpressive as the 
squeak of an ungreased wagon wheel. To 
keep the mind jumping, increase the dose. 
Leave the slow melodrama for the swift 
problem novel. Here is a new sensation! 
The decaying mind seeks decayed matter to 
work upon. So it hungrily fastens on those 



152 Bogus Money 

nasty studies in immorality, wherein hero 
and heroine are deified because they can so 
gracefully ignore the law of purity. 

That is why these books are read. Be- 
cause they furnish another type of excite- 
ment — a lower excitement as the mind de- 
generates all the time and digs deeper into 
the slime with a frenzied abandon. When a 
boy arrives at this stage in his reading he is 
at the beginning of his downfall. And the 
final scene arrives at a gallop. 

You see now, my dear Tom, why I denied 
your statement that the mud-pie book inter- 
ests you. It does not interest you, but only 
the animal in you. Innocent as it looks at 
the start, it is but the entering wedge to a 
complete unbalancing of your better nature, 
your mind and will. It drugs you first and 
destroys you afterward. 

"What then?" you ask. "Shall I never 
read an interesting book?" On the con- 
trary, I answer, every book you choose to 
read should be interesting — but interesting 
to you as a man, not as a mere animal. The 
three powers of the man must move together 
— body, mind, and will. This is true, not 



BogiLS Money 153 

merely with reading, but with everything we 
do. Eating one's meals, for example, is an 
entirely lawful animal gratification. One is 
supposed to bring a fine appetite to one's 
meals. Nevertheless, we don't eat from a 
nosebag. We don't rush to the table and 
fall on the food as on a fumbled football. 
No ; we say our grace, we observe at least the 
main rules of table etiquette; we avoid food 
that we judge harmful to us. In other 
words, our wills and our minds keep the ani- 
mal in us just where it ought to be. 

So, also, in a ball game, plenty of good 
animal excitement is to be found. Three on 
base, nobody out, a run needed to tie the 
score — this is a situation in baseball which 
we might call ''nifty." But right here what 
is it we admire in the players? It is their 
ability to keep cool, to think hard in spite of 
the tension. They don't crumble up in the 
pinch. Their heads are at work and their 
plans laid for any emergency. It is head- 
work and will power that are counting again. 
These absent, a disgusting failure to meet 
the situation is inevitable. 

And this holds just as much for our read- 



154 Bogu^ Money 

ing. A thrilling book is often fine reading. 
A certain amount of animal excitement is 
good for every one. But like a summer 
thunderstorm, that is brisk while it lasts, but 
after its booming and its crash leaves the 
sky clearer and the air purer than before, so 
with our exciting book. Let it start the 
gooseflesh on us, if you will, but let it also 
have that quahty running through it which 
provides a tonic for the mind and a healthy 
brace for the will. When all is said, each 
one of us has to learn to read as we learn 
everything else. We have to learn even to 
eat. We begin with milk and consciously or 
unconsciously work our way up to the stand- 
ard food. So with om- reading. We must 
work up to it. And our attitude toward it 
should be, as in all other things, the attitude 
of reaching up. Watch any boy practising 
for the high-jump. As soon as he sees he 
can clear the bar at five feet, he at once 
moves it up to five feet one inch. And so on 
by inches until he reaches the maximum. 

In like manner the books we read should 
nearly always be slightly ahead of us — books 
that will make us use our best power to ap- 



Bogus Money 155 

predate them, that will call forth little by 
little our reserve strength and speed. We 
should meet each book with a kind of chal- 
lenge as though to say, ''I can lick you." 
Then proceed to do it thoroughly, mind and 
heart and senses alert all the way, so as to 
finish the book with the feeling that it has 
not got away from us, nor got away with us, 
either. 

As soon as we realize that we have mas- 
tered a certain grade of book, toss that book 
into the discard. Raise the bar to a higher 
level, and leap over that. Then you are 
well on the way to finding the real books. 
They're up there somewhere. And strange 
to say, you will discover at the same time 
that you have not left the thrill behind you. 
But it will be a far more wonderful thrill 
than the crude creeps you used to yearn for. 
It will be an exaltation of the mind and a 
profound insight into the depths- of the heart 
that will be a reward to you greater than you 
ever dared to expect. 



LOOSE WIRES 

''Neither do men light a candle and put it 
under a bushel, hut upon a candles^ck, that 
it may shine to all that are in the house f^ 
Matthew v, 15. 

EVERY boy, and for that matter every 
man, wishes to be a hero. There is an 
instinct in us to shine, to show power, to do 
things worthy of admiration. Anything 
wrong about that? Not a thing. On the 
contrary, of itself it is one of the best signs 
in boy or man, a token that greatness lurks 
somewhere in every one of us, that an ideal 
is before us which we would like to live up to. 
Nature herself, then, impels us toward 
being heroes. We feel the craving in us to 
do great deeds. It is not a helpless craving, 
either. We are not tied down to a mere 
yearning. We have each of us a free will, 
which means nothing else than that a vast 
field of work is open to us, a field whereon 
we are conscious that we ought to distinguish 

1&6 



Loose Wires 157 

ourselves. As the poet tells us, we are 
merely dumb, driven cattle if we are not 
heroes in the strife. 

Our Lord tells us it is a right impulse: 
"Hide not your light under a bushel, but 
place it on a candlestick, where all men may 
see it." Plainly, he is saying to each one of 
us, "Be a hero." 

So the hero instinct in us is a noble one. 
It rises with us in our early boyhood and in 
one way or another stays with us through 
life, either as a lasting possession or as a last- 
ing regret. The boy who doesn't want to 
be a hero is no real boy. He will never 
grow into a man. And the man without this 
impulse is a dead man in his soul. 

But — and here is where all the tragedy of 
life begins — we can misuse this beautiful gift 
and spoil it. Because we are physically free 
to set up for ourselves a wrong ideal. And 
the result of this? Our whole life goes 
wrong. 

Don't forget this fact; just as soon as a 
boy sets up his idea of a hero, everything he 
does or thinks will adjust itself accordingly. 
That hero he decides upon will be like the 



168 Loose Wires 

Capitol at Washington. Every street in his 
soul will lead to it. All the traffic of his 
mind — ^his thoughts, imaginations, desires — 
will move toward th^t center. And what is 
of the last importance to the boy is that 
everything he thinks or feels will take its 
color, its life, its meaning, from that central 
image he has fashioned for himself. If he 
puts the wrong ideal up before him his life is 
a failure. If he places the right one there, 
he is saved. 

Every boy who ever went wrong began 
here. He had the instinct for being a hero 
but he had a false notion of what a hero 
means. He picked out a cheap, perhaps a 
nasty, ideal to live up to. He poured into 
that mold every pulsation of his life. And 
he hardened in that mold. He lit the candle 
but put the bushel right over it. The light 
sputtered and went out. 

It is, of course, in youth that this big mis- 
take is made — the time when we take every 
goose for a swan, rise to any bait, jump at 
ideals with our eyes shut, thinking all the 
time we have them open wide. We choose 
the wrong candlestick for our light, often a 



Loose Wires 159 

broken one, or one not high enough to throw 
the least light effectively. Chiefly, this 
comes from the shortsighted policy of imita- 
tion. We take a hurried look about us in 
boyhood and the first things we see are the 
spectacular things people are doing to make 
themselves heroes. We don't stop to think 
at all, but take our cue from these, imagining 
this is the short road to fame and fortune. 
It's a short road, all right, but its other name 
is folly and failure. Take a few samples of 
these plaster casts that we imagine to be 
marble statues, and see how they stand the 
wear and tear that a hero ought to stand. 
Let us choose, to start with, the Athletic 
Hero. 

This is an ideal which many boys between 
fifteen and twenty years of age, set up for 
themselves. Phil Fallhard is smitten, let 
us say, with the fever of being just like Roy 
Rushem, the wonderful line plunger and 
open field runner. Roy's sparkling eighty- 
yard run gets a headline on the sporting 
page. Roy is pictured with head down to 
the ground smashing like a shell through a 
whirl of arms and legs; or with his foot up 



160 Loose Wires 

in the air sending the oval goalward on a 
flight of sixty yards. Roy stands superbly 
on the field and it is ''Rah, rah, rah for 
Rushem!" Roy walks down the street and 
adoring whispers, louder than any applause, 
follow after him : "There he goes, Rushem, 
the Wonderful!" 

"Ah," says young Phil to himself, "there's 
a hero! I'll be just like Roy Rushem. 
Down with everything that could come be- 
tween me and my dream. Nothing else 
matters. I've found my ideal at last!" 

And Phil turns his whole life toward that 
central point, throws away his head to 
achieve fame at the point of his toe. 

Now, is Roy Rushem a hero? Yes, he is. 
But only on a square of ground three hun- 
dred by a hundred feet. Off that spot we 
don't know a thing about him. That grid- 
iron rubbed out, soon forgotten in the prac- 
tical work of life, he totals up as merely a 
hero for an hour on a college campus. How 
far he can kick a temptation; how quickly 
he can block the onslaughts of passion ; how 
fiercely he can tackle the deep and continu- 
ous difficulties of life: what endurance he 



Loose Wires 161 

possesses in driving forward against the ene- 
mies of his soul— all these, which are the es- 
sential problems of life and which must be 
solved before any man can call himself a 
hero, all these are still untouched, uncon- 
quered. A physical marvel is not synony- 
mous with a moral champion. 

"But it surely helps," objects Phil, ''to 
meet difficulties on the football field." 

Not in the way you've gone at it, Phil. 
You have given up everything else to be 
exclusively a football hero. YouVe said 
your last word there. Your life ideal is a 
pose in the center of a gridiron. Every flag 
you have is nailed to that mast. When the 
waters of life rise and flood that field, the 
mast goes under and yourself and every one 
of your flags with it. And what will our 
hero do then, poor thing? You must be a 
hero for life and on the wide field of the 
world, not for a few years on a patch of 
ground no bigger than a cabbage garden. 
You have lit your candle, it is true, but you 
have put a bushel over it. 

Another attractive ideal is the ''Clothes 
Ad" Hero. This ideal comes into the life of 



162 Loose Wires 

a boy who makes up his mind that if he looks 
hke the colored advertisements in the maga- 
zines he has won the battle of Hfe. If he 
could only get to stand with careless ele- 
gance on the veranda of the clubhouse, smil- 
ing a patronizing smile on the astonished 
gi'oups of milhonaires gathered on the grass 
beneath to gape at the young heir to the 
throne, in royal raiment clad I If he could 
only stand by yonder luxurious limousine 
and resting the left hand daintily upon the 
highly polished car, \vith the right hand 
guide the very beautiful princesses, be jew- 
eled and enameled, into the richly uphol- 
stered ''eight passenger,'' and then, taking 
the wheel, bowl breezily along the smooth 
boulevard, custodian of the exliibit of lovely, 
if languid, miUinery! Ah, this were para- 
dise enow ! 

The writers of advertisements of clothes 
well know the soft spot in young human na- 
ture. ''The answer to life's riddle is 
clothes," they tell Marty Minusbrane. 
'"'Clothes make the man. All you need is a 
front." And Marty beheves it! x\t that 
verv moment ]Martv starts for the rear. 



* 



Leose Wires 163 

The bushel is going right over his little light, 
A third juvenile ideal is the Shocker 
Hero. This is the lad who begins at four- 
teen by being the neighborhood daredevil. 
He is out to show everybody, especially his 
crowd, what a warrior bold really means. 
He is the rough boy in school, gets into the 
limelight by defying the teacher, never 
knows the answer to anything and is chesty 
about it. He eats and sleeps at home but 
spends the rest of the time in the streets. 
He wants to lead the ''gang" and trains up 
for that ; smokes cigarettes until he gets that 
lemon colored face and fingers; curses in 
hard fashion and with the intelligence of a 
parrot, and takes his exercise in pushing 
over signs, smearing windows and practising 
a general breakage business. 

As he gets older he develops what he calls 
"speed." He begins to add drink to his 
repertoire. He likes to think of himself 
with his foot on a brass rail, hat rakishly 
pushed back, pouring into his manly mouth 
tall glass after tall glass of white-collared 
brew. With practise growing more daring, 
he graduates from the tall glass to the small 



164 Loose Wires 

glass. And then he starts classic demon- 
strations of ''A jags defying the universe" — 
our Hero of the Bar. 

Put the bushel over him. He's out ! 

We might mention, too, the Money 
Slinger as a hero — the boy who thinks he is 
a world's champion because he is what the 
initiated call a ''spender.'" He is no "tight- 
wad," not he! What's money for if not to 
spend? And so he'll spend all his own and 
then look around for somebody else's to 
throw to the parasites who live off "spend- 
ers," and who keep their hero dizzy with their 
paid applause. All business men, no mat- 
ter what their business, have a large bushel 
ready for the Money Slinger. 

Finally, let us not altogether pass by the 
hero who looks on himself as the "Wise 
Boy." We may with perfect propriety 
hold our noses as we view the exhibit, but 
we'll give him a glance anyway. This is 
the shady boy who "knows things" and the 
only thing he knows is dirt. The dirtier he 
is and the more dirt he can smut over others, 
especially younger boys, the more of a hero 
he is. Vile phrases, nasty stories, words of 



Loose Wires 165 

double meaning, cheap jokes that are as old 
as the v/orld's slime; the taunting of inno- 
cence, the steady handing out of putrid ''in- 
formation" — the most ignorant half -knowl- 
edge imaginable — the continuous urging 
upon others younger than himself to prac- 
tise what he preaches, and practises — this is 
the offal out of which he builds his hero's 
statue to himself. And all his life's desires 
hover about its base. 

Don't get the bushel for this fellow. 

Get a garbage can. 

All these ideals we have mentioned, my 
dear boys, are no dream, as you well know. 
Many and many a boy who has started well 
has been fooled and wrecked by allowing 
himself to be drawn in one or other of these 
directions. But let us say to ourselves here 
and now, that none of these is for us. God 
wants us to be heroes, every one of us. But 
nobody has a chance even to begin to be a 
hero until he looks entirely past all these 
false ideals. And the time to look past them 
is in our youth. There's where we lay the 
first big foundation-stones and once we have 
chosen the wrong foundation for hfe, it is 



166 Loose Wires 

next to impossible to get another. Remem- 
ber what the '^candle" and the ''Hght" mean. 
The wax of the candle is our life of thought 
and word and action. The wick we may say- 
is our will, the light is God's grace. We 
feed our soul's life steadily through that wick 
into God's light, and grace, and love. 
There must be no interruptions from start 
to finish of the burning. And when the can- 
dle of hfe is burnt out that does not mean 
that it is annihilated. It has finished its 
work here but is just beginning the endless 
second life hereafter. 

So choose early the right candlestick for 
that light. Take no cues of what a hero you 
should be, from newspapers, or sports, or 
degenerates. Borrow your idea of what a 
hero is from God alone. 

We want to be "lights," not skyrockets, 
flashing out colors for a moment and then 
drowned forever in darkness. We want to 
"shine," not to sputter like a loose trolley 
wire ; to throw a steady radiance, not to float 
as a will-o'-the-wisp, a ghostly corpse-light 
over a swamp. And we must shine "to all 
the house," that all who look may see we 




Loose Wires 167 

have the strong and steady and relentless 
will to live so close to the grace of God that 
we shall be always the hero He wishes to 
see us. 



SPEED AND ORANGES 

NOT long ago I happened to meet on a 
train an old friend whom I had not 
seen for years. During our conversation I 
found that he had given up his former busi- 
ness and had gone extensively into orange 
growing in California. 

'Tretty soft, isn't it?" I said, half jok- 
ingly. ''All you have to do is to stick the 
tree into the ground and turn the sun on it. 
Then you can sit down under the trees and 
wait for the oranges to drop into your lap." 

"Well, that sounds easy enough," he an- 
swered, laughing. "But you'd be surprised 
to know just what worries are in this game. 
One of the reasons I took it up was some- 
thing like what you have mentioned. I 
thought it soft work and large returns. But 
it is the old story. Every one thinks that 
every one else's work is easy. And in a 
way growing oranges is easy. We work 

168 



Speed and Oranges 169 

hard enough at it, and we get good crops. 
But that is only half the work." 

"Where in the world is the other half?" 
I asked, surprised. 

"In getting that crop to market," he re- 
plied. "For example, the growers sent out 
from California last year somewhere around 
forty thousand carloads of oranges, but our 
total losses in transit were well over a million 
dollars." 

"What was the matter?" I asked. 

"Blue mold," he answered. "In some 
mysterious way a canker showed on the fruit 
while it was ripening in transit. It certainly 
hurt us. Customers were furious, refused 
shipments and we were getting a bad name 
generally." 

"Couldn't you trace the trouble?" I asked. 

"Well, we started out in a hurry by blam- 
ing it on the railroads — improper icing, we 
said, or delays in transit, or slow schedules, 
or all three together. That made the rail- 
roads furious and they accused us of pass- 
ing the buck. What's more, they proved it 
on us." 

"How did they do that?" 



170 Speed and Oranges 

''They put experts on the trail of those 
oranges from the tree to the end of the hne. 
And what do you think they found?" 

"What?" I said. 

''That the trouble was right in our own 
groves. The experts sent there discovered 
first, that blue mold could not penetrate 
oranges with sound, whole skins. Then 
they took the boxes ready for sliipment and 
with the naked eye found thirty-five per 
cent, of the oranges with holes punched in 
them. With microscopes they found a high 
percentage in addition." 

"Where did the holes come from?" I 
asked. 

"They found that very soon. The holes 
came from our own pickers. The careless 
pickers pulled the oranges roughly from the 
trees, or dug their clippers into the orange 
skin, or sunk their finger nails into the fruit. 
Then they threw the oranges any way at all 
into boxes that had gravel in them. They 
treated the oranges as though they were can- 
non balls. Of two men working side by side 
the percentage of injuries of fruit would 



4 



Speed and Oranges 171 

range from one per cent, to seventy per cent. 
The more careful picker, of course, was the 
one per cent, man." 

''And you had never suspected this?" 
"We never watched it, because we never 
thought oranges could be injured so easily. 
Why, we ourselves had machinery built to 
assemble the oranges rapidly and the ma- 
chinery was hurting them, too. In travel- 
ing, say, a thousand feet, those oranges 
dropped a dozen times distances of one to 
two feet. It seemed insignificant but it was 
really damaging to the fruit." 

"What was the outcome of it all?" 
"The first thing we did was to hurry up 
and apologize to the railroad people. They 
could have had a libel suit against us, I im- 
agine, the way we laid into them for our own 
blunders. Then we went after that equip- 
ment of ours and started to watch things in 
our own back -yard. We fired and hired 
until we got competent workers. But you 
can believe that we watch them every minute 
to see that they stay competent. I must 
say we have cut down our losses very much. 



172 Speed and Oranges 

but it does take work all the time. Yes, 
growing oranges does look easy but growing 
money out of them isn't quite so easy." 

A little distance along the line I parted 
from my friend, but his story of the orange 
business stayed with me. I began to reflect 
upon it and it struck me as a story with a 
moral. 

As a plain business proposition it paid to 
handle oranges carefully, to pick them skill- 
fully. The growers began by gathering up 
the oranges any way at all, and they lost. 
They used care, retrieved their losses, and 
their business flourished. 

What holds of oranges will hold of any- 
thing we attempt to realize upon, whether 
financially or spiritually. We'll never 
make genuine headway in anything without 
carefulness. And my own opinion, based 
largely upon personal experience and con- 
firmed by observation, is that almost the last 
virtue that youth values, or tries to attain 
to, is the virtue of carefulness. 

"Carefulness!" exclaims my friend Ray. 
''I never heard of the virtue of carefulness." 

No? What about those words of Our 



Speed and Oranges 173 

Lord, "Watch and pray that ye enter not 
into temptation?" What do you suppose 
that word 'Vatch" means? What do you 
suppose nearly all the parables of Christ had 
as their basic truth — the house built upon 
sand, the foolish virgins, the servant who 
used his talent badly, the guest who had not 
his wedding-garment on, the thief coming in 
the night, the pearls before swine, the prod- 
igal son, the rich fool, the vigilant servant. 
''Watch, therefore — lest coming on a sud- 
den he find you sleeping. And what I say 
to you, I say to all. Watch." 

Every one of these parables sounds the 
warning of carefulness. 

What about the continuous example of 
Christ through His whole life — His careful- 
ness to obey every law, however minute it 
seemed, however irritating and inconven- 
ient? His birth in a stable was the result of 
carefully following the law. According to 
the wish of the Father, He scrupulously 
obeyed the unjust human law that con- 
demned Him to the cross. And all the way 
between we have the same ; the paying of the 
tax, the rendering tribute to Caesar, the years 



174 Speed and Oranges 

of subjection to Mary and to Joseph at Naz- 
areth, the long sojourn in Egypt, the con- 
stant and delicate attention to the poor and 
the distressed through His entire public Hf e, 
so that He could say at the end of it all, say 
with a challenging note, "Which of you can 
accuse me of sin?" What does all this mean 
if not to show us in His life what He had 
taught in word, the virtue of carefulness? 

"Yes," admits Ray. "That does sound 
right. But then it's not meant for young 
fellows." 

"Our Lord showed it when He was young, 
didn't He?" I answer. 

"Well— but then—" protested Ray, "how 
can a young fellow be careful. That means 
he has no fun. All that sleepy stuff, walk- 
ing a chalk line, hush-or-you'11-wake-the- 
baby dope, it makes me feel as if I were in a 
show case all the time. Nobody can have 
fun in a show case. It isn't natural." 

"Of coiu-se it isn't natural," I reply. 
"And it isn't careful, either. Neither is 
what you call 'sleepy stuff' careful, nor 
walking a chalk line. They're silly occupa- 
tions and a waste of time." 



1 



Speed and Oranges 175 

*'But I don't mean it exactly that way," 
says Ray. 'T mean that it takes all the 
speed out of your life if you have to be care- 
ful all the time." 

''That's just where you're wrong, Ray. 
And it shows you don't know what careful- 
ness means. Carefulness will do just the 
opposite of what you claim. It will keep all 
the speed in your life and it will help you to 
go much longer than you could any other 
way. Because while keeping the speed go- 
ing, carefulness gives you direction, which 
means safety. You can't be safe if you're 
not careful, and if you're not safe you won't 
last long at the speed game. You'll hit 
something hard in a hurry and the chances 
are you'll never find out what it was you 
hit." 

I had told Ray the story about the 
oranges and I used it here. 

''Consider those orange growers?" I said. 
"They had lots of speed and thought they 
were doing wonders until all of a sudden the 
blue mold appeared and they became tan- 
gled up fearfully. What was the reason. 
They weren't careful, that's all. And it 



176 Speed and Oranges 

slowed them down terribly, made them lose 
heavily. They had to go back and begin 
over again. They finally came to their old 
speed but they put ten times the work on it 
to make it safe. They had learned the value 
of carefulness." 

''I think I see," said Ray, who was a very 
intelligent boy. 

But many boys never see this. They get 
the idea Ray had, that to be careful means to 
be ''dopey," as Ray put it, to be timid, slug- 
gish, inanimate, leaden and wooden. Care- 
fulness means the very contrarj\ It implies 
alertness, vigilance, quickness to foresee dif- 
ficulties, swift skill in solving them. A 
reckless man will not be careful but a brave 
man will. That's where a lot of our mis- 
takes get their start. We think bravery and 
recklessness are the same thing, and wake up 
in the hospital. That is, if we wake up at 
all. 

Why the hospital, though? Why not get 
the right idea of what it is to be careful be- 
fore it has to be stuffed into us through a 
hole in our head, or perhaps our heart? 



Speed and Oranges 177 

Carefulness doesn't mean that we lose our 
speed. It means that we use our speed. 
Anything at all that has to be done well must 
be done with a certain speed, and that speed 
must be kept up until the work is finished. 
It is carefulness that enables us to keep to 
the exact speed necessary for each stage of 
the work, to vary the speed perfectly accord- 
ing to changing conditions and to carry on to 
the finish. 

Because we must remember that no two 
kinds of work are done with the same speed. 
More than that, no two bits of the same work 
are done with the same speed. Right away 
you see where carefulness comes in. What 
speed is the right one for this work — and for 
this? And what speed is to be used at this 
point of the action — or at this? 

An aviator will go at a different rate of 
speed from a soldier crawling across "No 
Man's Land." Yet one should go as fast as 
the other considering the difference of their 
work. An express train will go flying over 
a twenty mile straightaway in the open coun- 
try, and the same train will creep slowly into 



178 Speed and Oranges 

the yards aiid under the train shed. It is 
using its speed in both cases, but is adapting 
it to conditions. 

If the soldier starting on the trench raid 
tried to go as swiftly as the aviator, he would 
surely be killed and his raid would fail. If 
the express train dashed into the main sta- 
tion at a sixt>^-miles-an-hour chp, they 
would need a new station inside of ten sec- 
onds. Also a new express train. 

It is the same all through. Speed is nec- 
essary for everything, but the right kind of 
speed for each single thing. Hence, care- 
fuhiess to see just what speed fits each thing 
and to give it that and no more, no less. 
But the trouble with youth and with inexpe- 
rience in general is that they think of only 
one kind of speed — material speed, fast mo- 
tion that you can see with your two eyes. 
Automobiles, airplanes, high-powered sea- 
craft, rapid-fire rifles, machine-guns, what- 
ever can shoot a milHon times a minute, or 
go a million miles a minute, or make a loud 
and continuous noise — that's the thing! 
We want that, and everything else is in the 
discard. 



Speed and Oranges 179 

We blame youth for this. But if we look 
at what we sometimes imagine mature age, 
we shall see that often it is just as badly 
fooled. Up to the days before the war, for 
example, we heard nothing but the great 
progress the world was making. States- 
men and college presidents and professors 
and deep-eyed philosophers and scientists 
and philanthropists and historians kept tell- 
ing us what progress the world was making, 
measuring even how fast we were advancing, 
telling us how we had got entirely out of the 
"dark ages." And nearly always they 
pointed at something material, something 
that could ''go fast," like ''kids" in a toy 
store. "Oh, look at the airplane! Oh, look 
at the submarine! Oh, look at the big 
armies! Oh, look at the wireless, the Zep- 
pelins, the dreadnaughts, the big locomo- 
tives! Oh, look at all the money, the way 
it's going! Gee, Willie, ain't it great! 
Gee, it's a grand world, and safe as any- 
thing!" 

And at the very moment the supposed 
"highbrows" had said the last word on our 
wonderful "progress," just when the speed 



180 Speed and Oranges 

was at its highest and going on oiled bear- 
ings — crack! and then cr-r-rash!! The war 
was on. 

And now look at the pieces. Pieces of 
countries, and of towns, and of families, and 
of men, scattered up and down over that 
world that was so "safe." The reason? 
Speed, merely material speed — minus care- 
fulness, minus caution. And now, like the 
orange growers, they are going back to be- 
gin all over. 

Every boy can learn a life lesson out of 
such things. If he isn't careful he will do on 
his small scale exactly what they have done 
on a large scale. He will aim at mere sur- 
face speed without thinking of its certain 
cost. He will pick out a crowd to go with 
that has what he calls the ''zip" and if he's 
able to drag himself out of the wreckage 
later, he'll know that all they had was the 
pip. He will shirk his studies at school as 
being tame and tasteless and go around the 
rest of his life wondering every time he feels 
his head why so much cement gets on his fin- 
gers. He will "pass up" his parents as too 
slow for a real, red-blooded, rah-rah boy, 



Speed and Oranges 181 

and later be broken-hearted to see his own 
children, if he has any, giving himself the 
go-by. He will dodge his church and the 
Sacraments early in the game and after- 
wards drag out a life soggy with blue mold, 
filled with the most degrading habits, a dull 
and dark and sodden life, paralyzed with a 
coward's fear of the inevitable end, helpless 
to put together even the few pieces that are 
left. And he'll never have another chance 
to go back and begin it all over. 



THE END 



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7 



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9 



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MISS ERIN. Fr.^ncis. 

MONK'S PARDON, THE. Navery. 

MR. BILLY BLTTONS. Lecky. 

MY LADY BEATRICE. Cooke. 

NOT A JUDGMENT. Keo.v. 

ONLY ANNE. Clarke. 

OTHER MISS LISLE, THE. Martin. 

OUT OF BONDAGE. Holt. 

OUTLAW OF CAMARGUE, THE. de Lamothe, 

PASSING SHADOWS. Yorke. 

PAT. Hinksox. 

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PILKINGTON HEIR. THE. Sadlixr. 

PRISONERS' YEARS. Cl-\rke. 

PRODIGAL'S DAUGHTER, THE. Bugg. 

PROPHET'S WIFE, THE. Browne. 

RED INN OF ST. LYPHAR. S.adlizr. 

REST HOUSE. THE. Clarke. 

ROAD BEYOND THE TOWN, THE, AND OTHER 

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10 



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JUVENILES. 
ADVENTURE WITH THE APACHES. Ferry. 

ALTHEA. NiRDLINGER. 

AS GOLD IN THE FURNACE. Copus. 

AS TRUE AS GOLD. Mannix. 

AT THE FOOT OF THE SAND-HILLS.. Spalding, S.J. 

BELL FOUNDRY. Schaching. 

BERKLEYS', THE. Wight. 

BEST FOOT FORWARD, THE. Finn. 

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BISTOURI. Melandri. 

BLISSYLVANIA POST-OFFICE, THE. Taogart. 

BOB O'LINK. Waggaman. 

BROWNIE AND L Aumerle. 

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CAMP BY COPPER RIVER. Spalding, S.J. 

CAPTAIN TED. Waggaman. 

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CHARLIE CHITTYWICK. Bearne. 

CHILDREN OF CUPA. Mannix. 

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CLARE LORAINE. "Lee.'* 

CLAUDE LIGHTFOOT. Finn. 

COLLEGE BOY, A. Yorke. 

CUPA REVISITED. Mannix. 

CUPID OF CAMPION. Finn. 

DADDY DAN. Waggaman. 

DEAR FRIENDS. Nirdlinger. 

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FREDDY CARR AND HIS FRIENDS. Garrold. 

GOLDEN LILLY, THE. Hinkson. 

GREAT CAPTAIN, THE. Hinkson. 

GUILD BOYS' PLAY AT RIDINGDALE. Bearne. 

HALDEMAN CHILDREN, THE. Mannix. 

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HARRY DEE. Finn. 

HARRY RUSSELL. Copus. 

HEIR OF DREAMS, AN. O'Malley. 

HELD IN THE EVERGLADES'. Spalding, S.J. 

HIS FIRST AND LAST APPEARANCE. Finn. 

HIS LUCKIEST YEAR. Finn. 

HOSTAGE OF WAR, A. Bonesteel. 

HOW THEY WORKED THEIR WAY. Egan. 

IN QUEST OF ADVENTURE. Mannix. 

IN QUEST OF THE GOLDEN CHEST. Barton. 

JACK. Religious H. C. J. 

JACK HILDRETH ON THE NILE. Taggart. 

JACK-O'-LANTERN. Waggaman. 

JUNIORS OF ST. BEDE'S. Bryson. 

JUVENILE ROUND TABLE. Series I, II, III. Each, 

KLONDIKE PICNIC, A. Donnelly. 

n 



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LITTLE APOSTLE OX CRUTCHES. Delamare. net, 40 

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MAD KXIGHT, THE. Schachixg. net, 40 

MADCAP SET AT ST. ANNE'S. Bruno\\-z. net, 40 
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MAN FROM NOWHERE. THE. Sadlier. 1 25 

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PERCY WYNN. Finn. 1 25 

PERIL OF DIONYSIO, THE. ^L^nnix. net, 40 

PETRONILLA. AND OTHER STORIES'. Donnelly. net, 50 
PICKLE AND PEPPER. Dorsey. 1 25 

PILGRIM FROM IRELAND. Carnot. net, 40 

PLAYWATER PLOT. THE. Waggaman. net, 50 
POLLY DAY'S ISLAND. Roberts. 1 25 

POVERINA. Buckenham. net, 50 

QUEEN'S PAGE, THE. Hinkson. net, 40 

QUEEN'S PROMISE, THE. Waggaman. net, 50 
OUEST OF MARY SELWYN. Clementia. 1 25 

RACE FOR COPPER ISLAND. Spalding, S.J. 1 25 

RECRUIT TOMMY COLLINS. Bcnesteel. net, 40 
RIDINGDALE FLOWER SHOW. Be-^rne. 1 25 

ROMANCE OF THE SILVER SHOON. Be-^^rne. 1 25 

ST. CUTHBERT'S. Copus. 1 25 

SANDY TOE. Waggaman. 1 25 

SEA-GULLS' ROCK. Sandeau. net, 40 

SEVEN LITTLE MARSHALLS. Nixon-Roulet. net, 40 
SHADOWS LIFTED. Copus. 1 25 

SHEER PLUCK. Bearne. 1 25 

SHERIFF OF THE BEECH FORK. Spalding, S.J. 1 25 

SHIPMATES. Waggaman. net, 50 
STRONG-ARM OF AVALON. Waggaman. 1 25 

SUGAR CAMP AND AFTER. Sp.alding, S.J. 1 25 

SUMMER AT WOODVILLE, A. S.^lier. net, 40 

TALISMAN. THE. Sadlier. net, 50 
TAMING OF POLLY. THE. Dorsey. 1 25 

THAT FOOTBALL GA^LE. Finn. 1 25 

THAT OFFICE BOY. Finn. 1 25 

12 



net. 


40 


net, 


50 




1 25 




1 25 


net. 


40 


net. 


40 


net, 


50 


net, 


50 


net. 


40 




1 25 


net. 


40 


net, 


40 




1 25 


net. 


50 




1 25 


net, 


40 



THREE LITTLE GIRLS, AND ESPECIALLY ONE. 

Taggart. 
TOLD IN THE TWILIGHT. Salome. 
TOM LOSELY: BOY. Copus. 
TOM PLAYFAIR. Finn. 
TOM'S LUCK-POT. Waggaman. 
TOORALLADDY. By Julia C Walsh. 
TRANSPLANTING OF TESSIE. Waggaman. 
TREASURE OF NUGGET MOUNTAIN. Taggart. 
TWO LITTLE GIRLS. Mack. 
UNCLE FRANK'S MARY. Clementia. 
UPS AND DOWNS OF MARJORIE. Waggaman. 
VIOLIN MAKER, THE. Smith. 
WAYWARD WINIFRED. Sadlier. 
WINNETOU, THE APACHE KNIGHT. Taggart. 
WITCH OF RIDINGDALE. Bearne. 
YOUNG COLOR GUARD. Bonesteel. 

FATHER LASANCE'S PRAYER-BOOKS 

MY PRAYER-BOOK. Imitation leather, red edges, $1.25, and in 

finer bindings. 
THE YOUNG MAN'S GUIDE. Imitation leather, red edges, $L00, 

and in finer bindings. 
THE CATHOLIC GIRL'S^ GUIDE. Imitation leather, red edges, 

$1.25, and in finer bindings. 
THE NEW MISSAL FOR EVERY DAY. Imitation leather, red 

edges, $1.50, and in finer bindings. 
THE SUNDAY MISSAL. Imitation leather, red edges. $1.00, and 

in finer bindings. 
THE PRISONER OF LOVE. Imitation leather, red edges, $1.25, 

and in finer bindings. 
MANNA OF THE SOUL. Thin Edition. Imitation leather, red 

edges, 75 cents, and in finer bindings. 
MANNA OF THE SOUL. Thin Edition, with the Epistles and 

Gospels. Imitation leather, $1.00. 
MANNA OF THE SOUL. Vest-pocket Edition. Silk cloth, 40 cents, 

and in finer bindings. 
MANNA OF THE SOUL. Extra-Large-Type Edition. Imitation lea- 
ther, red edges, $1.25, and in finer bindings. 
Complete list of Father Lasance's Prayer-Books sent on application. 

BENZIGER'S MAGAZINE 

THE CATHOLIC MAGAZINE 

Subscription price, $2.50 a year. Three years, $6.00 

NOVELS 
Benziger's Magazine has long been pre-eminent as THE magazine 
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SHORT STORIES 
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